i I, 



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THE 

HISTORY AND TEACHINGS 

OF THE 

EARLY CHURCH 

AS A BASIS FOR 

THE 

RE- UNION OF CHRISTENDOM 



Xecture6 

Delivered under the Auspices of the Church 
Club, in Christ Church, N. Y. 



NEW YORK 
E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 

COOPER UNION, FOURTH AVENUE 
1889 



B^ii^ 



fJ 



S-7 



Copyright, 1889, by 
E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 







JAN 29 1969 

TROW'3 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, 

NEW YORK. 




PREFACE. 

The lectures published in this volume were de- 
livered in Christ Church, in this city, during the 
spring of 1888, under the auspices of the Church 
Club, an association of laymen of this diocese who 
have banded themselves together with this object, 
among others, of promoting the spread of sound 
Church doctrine and building up a robust church- 
manship among the people. 

This course of lectures was the first effort of the 
Church Club in this direction. 

The subject chosen, that which gives the general 
title to the whole course, namely, " The History 
and Teachings of the Early Church as a Basis for 
the Reunion of Christendom^'' is eminently suggestive, 
in view of the recent utterances of our American 
House of Bishops, and of the Bishops assembled at 
the Lambeth Conference, on the subject of reunion 
and unity, and the erroneous constructions that 
some have put upon their words. 

We regard the Reunion of Christendom as im- 



IV PREFACE. 

possible except upon the basis of the faith and dis- 
cipline of the Early Church, and to ascertain what 
those are, men must study her history. 

Two facts stand out in bold relief in Catholic 
Christianity, considered from the historic stand- 
point : 

First, The historic ministry, tracing its descent 
back without break or interruption to the Apostles* 
times, and commonly and correctly described as the 
Ministry of the Apostolic Succession. 

Second. The fact that all Bishops are equal as 
touching their ofifice, and that our Lord committed 
the supreme government of His Church to the 
Apostles and their successors, that is to say, to the 
collective Episcopate, and not to any one individual 
Bishop. 

These facts appear to be strongly brought out 
in these lectures, which on that account alone 
deserve attention ; but when the names and ability 
of the prelates and theologians who delivered them 
are taken into account, the volume may be cordially 
recommended not only to members of our com- 
munion, but also to those thoughtful men not in 
communion with us who are earnestly pondering 
the great question of Christian Unity. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 
The Pentecostal Age i 

By the Rt. Rev. A. Cleveland Coxe, D.D. 

LECTURE 11. 
Syrian Christianity and the School of Antioch 31 

By Rev. Thomas Richey, D.D, 

LECTURE IIL 

The North African Church and Its Teachers 59 

By Rev. J. F. Garrison^ D.D. 

LECTURE IV. 
The School of Alexandria iii 

By Rev. John H. Egar, D.D. 

LECTURE V. 
The Church of Rome in Her Relation to Christian 

Unity 169 

By the Rt, Rev, George F, Seymour, S.T.D., LL.D, 



^be Pentecostal Hge anb (Browtb of tbe 
Cburcb to tbe Deatb of Saint 3obn. 



LECTURE I. 

THE RT. REVEREND A. CLEVELAND COXE, D.D., 

Bishop of Western New York. 

THE PENTECOSTAL AGE, 

Our times are grievous to be borne. For, to 
Christians, no material prosperity, no brilliant dis- 
coveries of science in its dealings with the world of 
sense, in short nothing that is temporal, and hence 
transient, can afford any satisfaction in exchange 
for a firm foothold upon the rock of faith in the 
Son of God, an eye uplifted in hope of immortality, 
and a heart full of love to humanity in all its needs, 
chiefly those which pertain to things eternal. But, 
to these great and lasting concerns, our times are in- 
different, coldly skeptical, or malevolently hostile. 
" The enemy comes in like a flood," but true to His 
promise, just at such a crisis, "the Spirit of the 
Lord uplifts a standard against him." 

Before this enemy those who love the Lord Jesus 
Christ feel the need of presenting a united front. 
Hence, a spirit of return to first principles is char- 
acteristic of the epoch among believers. Never, in 



4 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

modern times, have faith and zeal been more active: 
never before have learning and genius been more 
conspicuously enlisted on the side of divine revela- 
tion ; never before have more rapid movements 
been made for a witness to heathen nations, and 
for claiming the utmost parts of the earth for the 
kingdom of Messiah. At such a moment the Spirit 
of God moves over the chaos of divisions and scan- 
dals, and his generative and constructive forces are 
felt anew. The demand for unity is the most hope- 
ful feature of the age, and He who has inspired it 
will, I cannot but hope, bring it to good effect. 

But, here, we encounter a new class of perils. 
Men devise schemes and projects of union which 
have no reference to those imperishable and funda- 
mental principles, by the sacrifice of which all our 
schisms and scandals have been created. In our 
American republic, the Church of which we are 
members has ever been recognized as singular, as 
alone bearing a testimony concerning those organic 
laws of unity, which our Christian brethren have 
commonly accused of narrowness and bigotry. 
Doubtless truth itself may be maintained in a spirit 
essentially schismatical, because unloving and in- 
considerate. The orthodoxy of the Pharisee may 
be hateful to God ; the piety of the Samaritan may 
be preferred before it. Yet our Lord did not suffer 
the Samaritan woman to imagine that truth is un- 
important ; he reminded her that "salvation is of 
the Jews." We must " speak the truth in love " — • 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN: S 

live the truth in love, as the text implies ; but never 
must we be so " liberal " as to give away what does 
not belong to us. We must never compromise 
truth, in our haste to exhibit an unreal and disap- 
pointing union which is not unity and which is 
built upon the sand. We cannot surrender the 
vital unity of the Catholic and Apostolic Church 
to any sentiment of mere hand-shaking fraternity, 
which ignores the creed and the sacraments, and all 
that is essential for the perpetuity of their faithful 
ministration to the souls of men. 

Here then we are met by a not unnatural outcry, 
that we are proposing unity only on conditions of 
entire conformity with our own local Church. 
Quite the reverse is true. We plead for a Univer- 
sal System, in which we are included, but we make 
no stand on anything peculiar to ourselves. We 
are simply proposing that all should conform to the 
Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, in things 
scriptural and historically accepted from the begin- 
ning. This is not ours to enact, much less to com- 
promise. It is Law for all Christians. We accept 
it as ruled for us by those whom Christ had em- 
powered to do so ; had sent the Holy Spirit to 
guide; had promised to sustain; "binding in 
heaven what they should bind on earth." We lay 
on others nothing because it is ours. They are left 
to the largest freedom of details ; they may use rites 
and ceremonies and prayers unknown to us. They 
may maintain them in full profession of the one faith. 



O THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

They will then far outnumber us, and may take the 
land in possession. We shall rejoice and exult 
therein. They will, then, officiate at our altars, 
even if not prepared to welcome us to theirs. They 
often seem to take pleasure in representing us as a 
small body dictating to our superiors in numbers. 
But numbers beyond numbering have spoken thus, 
alike to us and them. In all charity, let them 
reflect that they may amuse themselves with a 
fallacy, and lose sight of historic truth and of the 
logic of unalterable facts. What they imagine us 
to dictate, comes to us and them alike, by the 
testimony of the historic Church of Christ, and 
by her universal legislation in ages, while as yet 
unity was unbroken. That unity was violated by 
the Bishop of Rome in the ninth century. The 
old constitutions and canons were ignored by 
him, as they now are by all the sects which 
originated in the sixteenth century ; victims of 
the intolerable yoke his schism had imposed on 
the West. His new canons and fabulous decretals 
had been substituted for Laws of the Primitive 
Christians, and this created all the schisms of West- 
ern Christendom. The ignorance of early Chris- 
tianity which had overspread the Latin churches 
bred a fatal mistake. Luther and Calvin failed to 
restore, while they strove to reform. They forgot 
that true reformation means nothing destructive, but 
implies the preservation of that which requires re- 
form. You do not break what you undertake to 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST JOHN: 7 

cleanse. A golden vase may be encrusted with 
filthy accumulations, and may have been gilded 
over its very dirt ; but you reform it by purging 
the dross, and by purifying. The moment you de- 
stroy the gold because of its defilement, you cease 
to be a reformer ; you become a destroyer, and not 
a repairer. Now, what says the law of God ? " If 
thou take forth the precious from tJie vile, thou 
shalt be as my mouth." This is restoration, and it 
is the only true reformation that can be recognized 
in the case of the Church ; for old it is and defiled it 
may be, but it cannot perish without a failure of 
Christ's promise, nor can any man found a new 
church in its stead. It is an organization, a visible 
kingdom which was established eighteen hundred 
years ago, and which may be as foul as Sardis with- 
out losing its identity. This the Master recognized 
in His message to the corrupt churches of antiq- 
uity ; and therefore, though the Latin churches be 
as wicked as Jezebel, and hateful as the Nicolaitanes, 
Christ's message to them one and all is only this: 
"Remember from whence thou art fallen, repent 
and do the first works." In a word, restore what is 
primitive in faith, in works, in order, in unity. 

The path to unity, then, is a very plain one. 
Take a body of Christians, for example, like the 
Lutherans ; the historic " Protestants," so univer- 
sally honoured for their history of intrepid and suffer- 
ing fidelity to certain great central truths. Is it 
anything which they ought to dread, this idea that 



8 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

something remains for them to do now, which could 
not be done amid the wars and confusions and per- 
secutions of the past ? Let us imagine a " Lutheran 
of the Lutherans " rising up in Germany and say- 
ing — " We have lost ground, and Rome has come 
back like a flood, where once we had fought and 
conquered. Let us see what mistakes were made ; 
and what remains to be done, if we would go on and 
reform our own glorious Germany. It is ignoble to 
fold our hands and consent to live on as a feeble sect, 
while Germany is unreformed, and while a fouler 
superstition than that of the Middle Ages holds 
millions of Latin Christians in spiritual bondage. 
Let us wake up the reformation and repair our mis- 
takes ; let us do what remains to be done, instructed 
by the history of three centuries ; let us go on to do 
for Germany what Luther wished to do ; what John 
Huss and Jerome of Prague might have done more 
successfully perhaps ; what we may do by falling 
back upon their lines and carrying on what they so 
gloriously begun." Let us imagine, I say, such a 
Lutheran raised up, by God's mighty power, to com- 
plete the reformation, by the work that remains to 
be done — that is, the work of RESTORATION ? Is there 
anything in all this that any Lutheran should not 
rejoice to do ? Very well ; to come back to our own 
land : Suppose some Lutheran here should say — 
these " Episcopalians " are Laodiceans ; they utterly 
fail to do the worl<pGod has set before them ; they 
do not recognize what even De Maistre saw to be 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN. 9 

their special mission. Let us not wait for them ; let 
us learn from De Maistre what is really " precious " 
in their possessions ; but, since they have laid it up 
in a napkin, let us take the lead and do for them 
and for ourselves together, what ought to be done. 
Let us begin the work of Universal Restoration. 
Let us go to our countrymen, the Old Catholics of 
Germany ; let us obtain the historic organization 
which is useful, to say the least, and on which hinges 
so much that is essential to peace. Thus qualified, 
let us appeal to other Christians to unite with us. 
We shall, in time, enfold the great mass of Ameri- 
can piety and zeal and learning in a truly Apos- 
tolic American Church ; a church tolerant of local 
differences, but confessing the Apostolic Faith and 
maintaining an organic Unity ; all '' striving to- 
gether " for " the faith once delivered to the saints." 
Let some Lutheran, I say, be raised up here, in 
America, to meet the gigantic problems of the land 
in such a spirit — what would become of us " Episco- 
palians ? " Why, the answer is — we should be swal- 
lowed up, absorbed, and unified in this great body, 
and we should sing Alleluias over such a consumma- 
tion. Perish every thought of ambition or of nar- 
row devotion to our own local history, that should 
stand in the way of a consummation so glorious. 
Let our fellow-Christians rise up to a work so 
blessed, and they may be sure that they will en- 
counter no opposition from us. We should be found 
working with them and for them. In functional 



10 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

details we should daily no doubt draw nearer and 
nearer together, and so organic Unity might be re- 
stored in God's good time. We do not say " come 
over to us," therefore we do not propose to go over to 
you. But, when we all consent to the Universal Law 
of System, and gravitate to the Common Centre of 
Catholic and Primitive and Scriptural Truth — then 
the work is done. There we all meet, and there we 
all become One in Christ and His Church. Thus, 
too, we shall defeat what is Roman in the alien im- 
migration, by embracing all that is Catholic in it. 
Thus Romanists will have come to America to be 
reformed ; they will become " Old Catholics " first ; 
and then, one with their fellow-Christians, in the 
great American Church of the future. 

I have put the case in a form of imaginary prog- 
ress, sufificiently humiliating to ourselves. It is 
hard even to think of ourselves as so utterly un- 
worthy to help others. But, such is our answer to a 
stale complaint of arrogance on our part of which 
it effectually disposes. 

I might easily point out the elements which exist 
among American sects, for this great restoration ; to 
be wrought out by themselves, and so made real and 
lasting; but this is not my duty now. As introduc- 
tory to the course which has been so admirably out- 
lined, I have ventured upon a train of thought 
which, 1 trust, will guard against mistakes within 
or without our own fold. Let me now congratu- 
late you on your noble efforts to become rooted and 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN, II 

grounded in the fundamental principles of Unity, 
which it is our mission to uphold, leaving results to 
God ; so reaching just conclusions as to what is to 
be conceded under the law of liberty, and what is 
to be defended and maintained as truth belonging to 
God, which no weak yearning for sentimental good 
has any excuse for compromising. I am very glad 
that it falls to me to go over the scriptural ground of 
the first century. I hold, indeed, that the second 
century is evidence of what the apostles delivered 
to the Church of the primitive age; for he who 
thinks otherwise must confront the absurd conclu- 
sion that the whole church committed suicide as 
soon as the apostles fell asleep, by rejecting divine 
ordinances and constitutions and modes of worship, 
and " the faith once delivered to the saints." It is 
the simple statement of the Anglican Church, that 
certain things are " evident to all men diligently 
reading the Holy Scripture and ancient authors." 
The ancient authors must keep their place ; they 
are merely witnesses, and help us to determine 
whether anything we seem to see in the Scriptures 
are only our private whim. If what we read in the 
New Testament is found to coincide with what we 
find in the writings of Clement and Ignatius and 
Polycarp, then, by all rules of evidence, we are as- 
sured of our position. It is a maxim which rules in 
all courts of law, that " the contemporary interpre- 
tation of any law or ordinance is the strongest and 
must prevail." 



12 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

We come, then, to the Pentecostal period. The 
Holy Ghost was not only to guide the apostles into 
all truth ; He was to " bring to their remembrance " 
all things which Christ Himself had told them. It 
will be recalled that after our Lord had risen from 
the dead, the apostles themselves were yet full of 
Jewish ideas, and were only gradually awakened to 
the universal inclusiveness of their commission and 
of their appointed work. The story of St. Peter's 
vision at Joppa, and of the baptism of Cornelius, 
proves this. The Holy Ghost was that "other 
Comforter " who was to open their hearts and minds 
to the whole of what their Master had designed. 
During the great forty days. He had been seen of 
them after His resurrection, and He had then taught 
them *' the things pertaining to the kingdom of God." 
Now, in the Acts and the Apostolic Epistles we 
have the record of these same things. What the 
apostles ruled and wrought and wrote are the things 
" pertaining to the kingdom," which the Master or- 
dained, and which the Holy Ghost brought to their 
remembrance. Entire unity of system runs through 
and regulates all, in all the Epistles. If we find any 
one rule laid down by any apostle, that is what all 
the apostles " ordained in all the churches." To all 
alike were given " the keys of the kingdom ; '' all 
" spake by the same Spirit." To the whole College 
of the Apostles was given the promise that " what 
they bound on earth should be bound in heaven." 
The "Unity of the Spirit;" the Communion of 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN. 1 3 

Saints in that one Spirit ; the " one Lord, one Faith, 
one Baptism ; " these are the outgrowth of that pe- 
riod, which is delineated for us in the Book of the 
Acts, the " Gospel of the Holy Ghost." 

So, then, let us come to one of those imperial 
texts, which flood with light all that is elsewhere 
recorded concerning the primitive faithful. Here it 
is, in the history of the great day of Pentecost itself, 
when the Catholic Church received the first out- 
pouring of the Holy Ghost. " Then they that gladly 
received his word, were (i) baptized, and the same 
day there were added to them about three thousand 
souls. And they continued steadfastly in (2) the 
apostles' doctrine, and (3) fellowship, and (4) in the 
breaking of bread, and (5) the prayers." Here are 
all the elements of Catholic Unity. St. Peter's 
great privilege of being the first to confess the In- 
carnate God had been rewarded by the privilege of 
a primacy peculiar to himself, and in its own nature 
incommunicable to others.* His was the first use of 
the keys, in opening the kingdom to Jews and then 
to Gentiles. But, there St. Peter's distinction ends. 
The same keys and the same authority were given to 
all the apostles in corporate unity. Hence St. Peter 
received mission from the Apostolic College, instead 
of giving it. The apostles " sent Peter and John " 
into Samaria to confirm those whom St. Philip had 
baptized. In the first council it is St. James who 
presides, and not St. Peter. St. Paul disputes with 

^ Acts XV. 7. 



14 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

St. Peter, and the Holy Ghost ratifies what St. 
Paul had maintained against him. St. Paul is per- 
mitted by the Spirit to record that he received 
nothing from James, Peter, or John, " who seemed 
to be pillars," and that he was " not a whit behind 
the very chiefest of the apostles." Christ himself 
had settled beforehand, that no one among them 
was to " be greatest." He hinted to them that there 
were " last who should be first," and this was ful- 
filled in the subsequent primacy of St. James, and 
in the universal mission of St. Paul to the Gentiles, 
while St. Peter's jurisdiction was expressly restricted 
to the Jewish dispersion. St. Cyprian thinks that 
our Lord's twofold act was significant : first, he gave 
the keys as signifying one indivisible power; then 
he gave the same to all the apostles to signify that 
all had the same right to use it. Here, then, we have 
the nature of "the apostles' fellowship " defined. It 
is not communion with St. Peter, nor with any one 
Apostolic See ; it is the communion and fellowship 
of the apostles maintained, (i) by their baptism, (2) 
their doctrine, and (3) by " continuing steadfastly " 
therein, as opposed to becoming followers of any 
one teacher, or joining any sect originating subse- 
quently to the foundation of the Christian Church, 
thus organized once for all and forever, under the 
guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

The apostolic eucharist and the apostolic prayers, 
here referred to, show that a system of worship was 
recognized by the Church from the beginning, as 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN. 1$ 

that in which all Christians were to continue stead- 
fastly. This was none other than the synagogue 
worship augmented by Christian " hymns and spir- 
itual songs," which lifted the Psalter into the 
Christian substance that had been so long veiled 
under the Law, and which Christ, in the walk to 
Emmaus, had expounded in its fulness of relation 
to Himself. Such were the apostolic prayers, 
while the apostolic "breaking of bread " succeeded 
the bloody sacrifices of the Law, and fulfilled the 
prediction of Malachi concerning " the pure oblation " 
in every place among the Gentiles. This St. Paul 
refers to. He asserts it to be part of his great com- 
mission to secure this to the Gentiles as their " lit- 
urgist and hierurge ; " for so the Greek records it. 

We now come to the enlargement of the Apos- 
tolic College by the commission of " Barnabas and 
Paul ; " and subsequently by the admission of others, 
who are distinguished from the apostles of Christ's 
personal ordaining, as " apostles (or angels) of the 
churcJiesT Here was signified (i) Christ's intention 
to perpetuate the apostolic order, and (2) the co- 
equal power of the Holy Ghost to do this for 
Christ. Then (3) we come to the formation of what 
is now called the " Apostolic Episcopate, " i.e.^ the 
succession of those chosen to the presidency of the 
churches by the churches themselves. These re- 
ceived the ordinary gifts (but not the extraordinary 
functions) of the original apostles of Christ. 

Our Lord intended the Apostolic order to be per- 



I6 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

petual in His Church : " He was to be with them 
always, to the end of the world." Not with them 
personally, of course, but with the Apostolic Min- 
istry. The other orders were founded by the Apos- 
tles themselves. They were " also presbyters ; " and 
they appointed co-presbyters^ as well as co-apostles ; 
they were " deacons," and they appointed an order 
of deacons to relieve them of their inferior minis- 
tries. But, to Timothy and Titus personally, as co- 
apostles, they gave co-apostolic power to ordain 
presbyters and deacons. No such powers were 
lodged with the presbytery, though they assisted in 
laying on hands when persons were admitted to 
their order. Thus, Titus was stationed in Crete to 
" ordain presbyters in every city." He was the or- 
dainer ; otherwise it would have been sufficient to 
leave a presbytery to " ordain in every city," when 
once two or three presbyters had been ordained to 
start with. 

Here let me note, once for all, that not names, 
but things, are thus spoken of. The original names 
of these officers were (i) "Apostles of Christ,'' or 
"Apostles of the Churches ;" (2) presbyters, or el- 
ders, and (3) deacons. They were sometimes spoken 
of less technically, and hence confused ideas have 
arisen. Apostles and presbyters were bishops^ i.e., 
pastors, and we still speak of both orders alike as 
pastors. The presbyters of Crete were pastors of 
their flocks in certain cities ; but Titus was pastor 
" i7t every city " of Crete, and had the presbyters 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN. 1/ 

also in his jurisdiction, as appears from the Epistle. 
More strikingly this principle appears in the two 
Epistles to Timothy : He presides over the local 
presbyters, who were pastors (or " bishops ") in 
Ephesus; but he, while not less a co-presbyter, is 
alone empowered to ordain. He himself had been 
ordained a presbyter " by St. Paul, with the pres- 
bytery," and he is reminded not to neglect his pres- 
byter-work because he had also a superior place and 
task. It is noteworthy that the term " presby- 
ters," like pastors now, was a term often used in 
speaking of the two higher orders, long after the 
term " bishops " had become peculiar to one of them. 
Those who had succeeded to apostolic powers de- 
lighted to imitate St. Peter and speak of themselves 
a co-presbyters ; and of their brethren presbyters as 
co-bishops, that is, overseers or pastors of their several 
flocks. The fallacy of arguing, therefore, that these 
were overseers in the same degree is most apparent. 
Little by little the modest term of bishops (to which 
presbyters had a right in a lower degree) became re- 
stricted to pastors-in-chief; who thus resigned for- 
ever, to those chief apostles of Scripture, and es- 
pecially to those who were filled with the extraor- 
dinary gifts needful in founding the Church, that 
venerable name. Again, I remark, we have been 
speaking of things, not mere names. These things 
are the three orders, distinctly marked as in other 
scriptures, so also more emphatically and definitely 
in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. Epaphroditus 



1 8 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

was the " apostle " of the Philippians, and carried to 
his presbyters and deacons the epistle which St. 
Paul wrote to them, to account for his long absence 
and to fortify them in their love to their Diocesan ; 
so that this epistle is hardly less explicit. And here 
let it be said, once for all, that if any other theory 
of the Primitive Ministry be adopted, it is impos- 
sible to interpret the Acts and Epistles in a 
symmetrical and harmonious way, meeting all cases 
and all points without straining anything. On 
the other hand, this system involves no other 
difficulty than a confusion of words or names, out 
of which the schoolmen framed the Presbyte- 
rial theory, in order to lower the bishops to the 
order of presbyters, and thus to exalt the Pope 
as the one and only Bishop properly so called. It 
seems strange, but it is not less true, that in this our 
denominational brethren are the victims of the 
Papacy. In fact they are the only Christians who 
accept the Papal dogma by which Presbyters are 
made the highest order in the Christian Ministry. 
-Romish bishops by their laws are only presbyters, 
admitted to Episcopal functions, as vicars of the 
Universal Bishop, or Pope. Their dogma affirms 
that the holy orders are three, " presbyters, deacons, 
and sub-deacons^' and that these three orders have 
existed since the apostles' times ! This is palpably 
a falsehood as regards sub-deacons ; and it is need- 
less to say that the Greek churches, with all the 
Fathers, recognize the threefold ministry as " bish- 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN. 1 9 

ops, presbyters, and deacons ; " that is in scriptural 
terms " apostles, elders, and deacons ;" phraseology, 
which I have sufficiently explained. 

The formation of the Historic Episcopate is thus 
expounded ; but I have anticipated in some degree 
as to the process. All becomes more absolutely and 
unanswerably evident, if v/e return to the enlarge- 
ment of the Episcopate, or rather of the Apostolate, 
by the admission of others to the company of the 
eleven. The case of Matthias is exceptional. St. 
Peter's language about his election, his reference to 
the minatory psalm, and his exposition of its force, 
like his great sermon on the day of Pentecost, are 
full of ideas wholly unlike anything that precedes 
the " Walk to Emmaus " and the " Great Forty 
Days." All this reflects the Master's own teachings 
concerning His kingdom after His resurrection. 
Exceptionally, and to fulfil the Scriptures, there- 
fore, Matthias in place of Judas becomes an apostle 
under the command — " his bishopric let another 
take." But this was only his call ; his qualification 
was that of the Holy Ghost, given to him as to the 
eleven, on the day of Pentecost, when the fiery 
tongues completed the investiture of the Apostolic 
College. It was thus rendered what it had been 
before, an unmutilated company of original eye-wit- 
nesses of the Incarnate Word. 

Two more were, soon after, added to this com- 
pany, in exceptional ways; and this enlargement of 
the Apostolic College disposes of all theories based 



20 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

on any idea that the number of the apostles was in 
fact limited to twelve. This idea receives, it is true, 
a momentary colour when, in the Apocalypse, the 
" twelve foundations " are spoken of, and the 
*' twelve apostles of the Lamb." Just so " the 
twelve sons of Jacob " are spoken of, though in 
the Apocalypse Dan is omitted and Ephraim is not 
mentioned, except under the name of Joseph ; while 
like Manasseh, his brother, he is only Jacob's grand- 
son, not literally his son. It is not easy to harmonize 
this catalogue with that of Jacob on his death- 
bed. So we read of " the four-and-twenty elders." 
Who are they ? Secret things belong to God, and 
nobody is called to harmonize them before His 
time. Obviously they do not affect the recorded 
facts that Barnabas and Saul were added to the 
original College of the Apostles. 

On one point St. Paul always insists : he is an 
apostle " of our Lord Jesus Christ." He does so, 
because there were apostles " of the churches." Our 
Lord had personally called him ; he was " not of 
men," like false apostles, " nor by men," like the 
" apostles of the churches." These latter were sue- 
cessors of the apostles; but he and Barnabas, in 
divers ways, were called to be of the original college. 
The original apostles recognized ' them as such, giv- 
ing them " the right hand of fellowship ; " but it is in- 
structive to note an underlying principle here, which 
amounts to this, viz., that an apostle called by Christ 

.* Galat. ii. 9. 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN. 21 

himself, and an apostle called by Christ through His 
Holy Spirit, are of like character, and as such co- 
equals. Barnabas is said to have had a call from 
the Spirit previous to that recorded of his mission ; 
St. Paul had been called and made an apostle pre- 
viously. Both received their mission, not their 
order, from the Holy Ghost through inspired proph- 
ets. The original apostles recognized them as 
aggregated to their own company, not as successors, 
but as apostles, by original and underived commis- 
sion ; ''^ perceiving^'' says St. Paul, " the grace that 
was given unto w^," that I, as well as Barnabas, 
" should go unto the Gentiles." Those who fail to 
distinguish between order and mission find difficul- 
ties in this history, most of which disappear if this 
distinction is made. But even the Independents, I 
am informed, practically recognize the difference ; 
that is, they regard, a certain brother as a qualified 
preacher of the gospel, but when he is elected to be 
the pastor of a particular flock, they unite in "set- 
tling him," which they do with a form called " the 
right hand of fellowship." In other words, they 
give him mission after their manner. Apply the like 
idea to the inspired mission of two apostles; the 
one of whom received his apostleship directly from 
Christ personally, while the other received the same 
indirectly from Christ, through His divine Spirit. 
Then, they received niissioyi, from the Holy Spirit, 
through inspired men commanded to solemnize the 
gift. Their entire equality with the original college of 



22 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

apostles demonstrates the power of the Holy Ghost 
to ordain and qualify ministers of Christ through 
all time, and till the second coming of our Lord. 

The secondary class of apostles is called that of 
" apostles of the churches " by St. Paul. The 
Greek word {a7zgelos), or " a^igel of the churches," 
is equipollent — a mere synonym — and is used by St. 
John as he uses a word for " the Lamb," different 
from what is used elsewhere, but entirely equivalent. 
His mind, in both cases, probably reverted to the 
original Syriac, as when he uses "Cephas" instead 
of Peter, in the story of that apostle. 

The passage in which St. Paul uses this distinc- 
tion is very striking, and is a key to other passages. 
Thus he says, in his second Epistle to the Corin- 
thians : ^ " Whether any do inquire of Titus, he is 
my partner and fellow-helper concerning you ; or 
our brethren be inquired of, they are the apostles of 
the churches and the glory of Christ." Thus he de- 
fines the apostleship of those whom he employed as 
" fellow-helpers," and about whose status the Corin- 
thians were apparently puzzled. When Christ ap- 
pears to St. John, " holding seven stars in his right 
hand " — these stars receive the same name — " an- 
gels (or apostles) of the seven churches," and their 
starry similitude indicates this " glory of Christ ; " 
dimmed and clouded as was the lustre of some of 
these seven, who were yet recognized by the long- 
suffering author of their ministry. If then such 

* II. Cor. viii. 27. 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST, JOHN. 2$ 

be " inquired after," in the case of Apollos, or 
Silas, or Sosthenes, or Timothy, or Titus, or others, 
here is the answer: Though not primary apostles, 
they were yet Christ's apostles, as being chosen by, 
or divinely set over, certain churches, or appointed 
to be coadjutors of other apostles, as were Linus 
and Cletus at Rome. When we come to a later 
period, we find Timothy and Titus localized in 
Ephesus and Crete; and later still, we find seven 
churches of Asia, with their localized " angels." 
Thus, the diocesan Episcopate was formed before 
the death of St. John, and accepted by our Lord 
himself, as appears in what " the Spirit saith unto 
the churches." 

Whatever interpretation may be put upon Script- 
ure, however, by methods which depend upon the 
ambiguities of certain words, we reach historic facts 
of the second century which point to one conclusion 
only in the records of the Church. Here we find 
not a trace of any other system than that which I 
have delineated. Call him what you will, for in his 
humility, amid the simplicity and suffering estate of 
all Christians about him, he assumed no titles of 
pre-eminence and was " also a presbyter ; " call him, 
therefore, what you may, one always presides over 
the presbytery and administers the affairs of any lo- 
cal church under the instructions given to Timothy 
and Titus. He ordains presbyters; the presbytery 
assists in the ordination, but never ordains without 
him. He alone administers discipline, receives and 



24 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

tries accusations, exhorts and rebukes with authority, 
and guides the flock as the common father of the 
people and their pastor as well. The Epistles of 
Clement and of Polycarp only incidentally illustrate 
this condition of things, but their contemporary Ig- 
natius makes them the subject of his letters to the 
churches of Asia and to Polycarp, his beloved 
brother, as he goes to Rome to die a martyr. In 
that crisis he felt the importance of entire unity 
among the churches, and of that holy spirit of order 
and brotherly love in local churches which alone 
could prevent schisms and heresies from cropping 
out and devouring the flock, as St. Paul had fore- 
told. We may fearlessly challenge the Papacy to 
produce anything, in this primitive period, to sup- 
port its presbyterial theory; which makes bishops 
in no respect other than presbyters, empowered by 
one universal bishop at Rome to represent his au- 
thority, by his permission only ; not acting as em- 
powered by Christ, in perfect equality with all the 
bishops of Christendom, whether at Rome or Anti- 
och. We may just as confidently challenge Presby- 
terians to show, anywhere in the history of ages 
preceding the time of Calvin, any token of a church 
constituted on Calvin's theory. But his theory was 
an honest mistake, derived from his scholastic edu- 
cation. He had been always led to suppose that 
bishops were, what Rome makes them, mere pres- 
byters deriving their episcopal functions from the 
pope. He accepted the scholastic doctrine that 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN. 2$ 

presbyters are the highest order in the ministry. 
What follows in his mind is strictly logical. He 
argues thus : If then the Papacy is a fiction (as is 
evident enough), bishops, who are only the pope's 
vicars, must disappear also, for shadows cannot exist 
without a substance. Thus he argued and created 
Presbyterianism ; most reasonably, if we grant the 
purely Papal premisses on which he reasoned. And 
yet, even Calvin, who had never seen many of the 
early Christian writers now in our hands, recognizes 
the existence in primitive ages of a pure Episcopacy, 
derived from Christ and not from the Pope, in which 
one presbyter presides over the brotherhood ; and he 
declares that " there is no anathema " which would 
not be deserved by anyone unwilling to accept such 
an Episcopacy. To the honour of English Presby- 
terians in the seventeenth century, they, therefore, 
placed their fundamental principle not on the exclu- 
sion of bishops, but on the admission of presbyters 
and laymen to a share in the synodical regimen of 
churches ; and they professed themselves ready, 
with this concession, to return to the Church of 
England. The concessions which they demanded as 
to presbyters and laity, in synods, are made in our 
American Church. 

Here then is the interpretation of ages ; of primi- 
tive antiquity and of universal consent ; as to the 
meaning of Scripture and the ordinances of the 
Apostles empowered by the Holy Ghost. East and 
West, alike, all the Councils and all the Fathers of the 



26 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

first ages are agreed as to this. Nor does even the 
paradoxical and vindictive Jerome, magnifying his 
order as a presbyter against the ambitious deacons 
of his day, say anything practically different ; though 
his rhetorical extravagances undoubtedly laid the 
^'gg which the schoolmen hatched when they pulled 
down bishops to magnify a pope. The Greek 
churches, to this day, and all the Easterns, who 
have never recognized the papacy, exhibit the un- 
changed system of the early Church, as an irrefrag- 
able evidence of what I have thus presented. 

So, then, he who rejects this system must not only 
confront these historic facts, but he must face another 
dilemma, not less confounding. If the Presbyterian 
or other similar theory was that of the Apostolic 
ordinances, how comes it that before St. John had 
ceased to teach and to preside in the infant Church, 
all traces of this theory had so utterly disappeared ? 
How comes it that nobody protested against the 
changes introduced ? That no presbytery resisted 
the elevation of one of their brethren to a permanent 
presidency over them ? That no historian tells us 
anything of this utter transformation of Church 
Order ? That not a single church existed or was 
heard of, at the time of the first Christian Council, 
that was not constructed in the Episcopal polity ? 
That nobody ever hinted or imagined, in those 
days, that there had been a world-wide revolution 
of ideas and of organization in the Christian Church, 
since the apostles fell asleep ? Well does Chilling- 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN. 2^ 

worth argue that the metamorphoses of Mythology 
or of Arabian fables would be credible, if anybody 
could credit that the Apostolic churches were 
Presbyterian, but somehow, in a single night as it 
were, were all turned into " Episcopalianism ; " no 
man forbidding. And nobody has ever pretended 
to fix the date or give any evidence of a revolution 
the most marvellously radical and universal that can 
be imagined. 

Hence, after the study of the Pentecostal age in 
Holy Scripture, we come to ancient authors as a 
school-boy comes to the " proof " of his simple 
arithmetical processes. If the entire Church is found, 
at the close of this period, united in a system of 
doctrine and polity such as we have derived from 
Holy Scripture, the concurrence proves our conclu- 
sions to be true. By the destruction of this ancient 
polity all our divisions have been created ; we ask a 
return then to this historic system, as the only solu- 
tion of our difficulties. This the Catholic (Nicene) 
Church requires, hence, on this point, we can make 
no compromise. It is not ours to give ; to yield is 
not liberality, but treason to Truth. To insist in a 
spirit of love is the highest charity to our brethren, 
who cannot be restored to Catholic unity on any 
other base. The conclusion of the whole matter 
then is this, Calvin himself bearing witness : Since 
God has restored, in many places, that early system 
which was the safeguard of unity and in which were 
digested all the Scriptural and Primitive Constitu- 



28 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE AND GROWTH OF 

tions of Unity ; and in which an Episcopate exists 
dependent upon Christ and not upon a Papacy ; 
and in which presbyters and laymen may have their 
share in Synodical Legislation ; it is the duty of all 
Christians to heal our divisions by returning to this 
system. Returning to this syste^n^ I say ; I do not 
ask them to join us ; but, when they organize them- 
selves, accordingly, they will let us join them, I 
trust. I dare not use Calvin's strong language; he 
anathematizes all who would reject this system, 
should it be attainable. It would be contrary to 
my views of duty to anathematize anybody; but 
what I say is this : It is time for our Presbyterian 
brethren to study the laws of unity, and to do so in 
the spirit of that love to Christ, which, for His 
sake, would remove mountains. If so, they may re- 
store to his family that oneness, which Christ Him- 
self teaches us is the condition of the world's con- 
version. Hear His words : " That they all may be 
one. . . . That the world may believe that 
Thou hast sent Me." And this unity is made in- 
divisible, like that of the Father and the Son, in the 
same passage of Holy Writ. 

Observe the absolute unity of Christian organiza- 
tion as left by St. John. Return to these divine 
principles is the only possible base of the restora- 
tion. *' Reformation " must be incomplete till thus 
crowned with positive conformity to the pattern in 
the Mount, for which a negative "protest" has been 
too long substituted. And let our brethren observe 



THE CHURCH TO THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN. 29 

that in all this, as I have said, we propose nothing 
that is our own specialty. Not our prayer-book ; 
not our Anglican ideas, prejudices, or customs ; not 
our Anglo-American peculiarities ; not in any sense 
unity with us — save as, by coming to unity with the 
historic Church of Christ, everywhere and as always 
prescribed, they compel us to meet them as Catho- 
lic and Apostolic brethren. Let them take their own 
courses ; work out their own restoration in their own 
way, and all is done. We care not a straw for any 
triumph of our cause, or of our local church. We 
plead for the whole Church. Let them absorb us, 
and not the reverse, which they imagine is our am- 
bition. Perish the thought ! We dare not so think 
of it ; we cherish " unfeigned love of the brethren," 
and in all we propose, it is the love of Christ that 
" constraineth us." For there is an example, in 
Holy Scripture, which in many ways meets their 
case. There was one learned, eloquent, and " mighty 
in the Scripture," who preached Christ with mar- 
vellous power and success. He was pre-eminently 
a preacher of the Gospel ; he had no equal. What 
more can be said ? Only this. He knew the Word 
of God ; few knew it so well ; but he had yet to 
learn that there is a "Way of God," clearly recog- 
nized as the institution of Christ and of His Holy 
Spirit, through inspired apostles. This glorious 
character, then, added humility the most profound 
to all his other qualities, and consented to learn the 
** Way of God " more perfectly from two of the 



30 THE PENTECOSTAL AGE. 

humblest members of the Apostolic Church. Is it 
too much to ask of some noble Apollos that he 
would consent to learn, from all historic Christen- 
dom, " the Way of God more perfectly ? " On this 
appeal, I rest my argument ; and if it be not of 
God, may He raise up somebody to teach me His 
way, " more perfectly." May He give me the spirit 
never to harden my heart against godly men, who 
would speak to me their views of " Truth, in 
Love." 



Syrian Cbrlstianit? anb tbe Scbool of 
antiocb. 



i 



LECTURE II. 

REV. THOMAS RICHEY, D.D., 

Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the General Theological 
Seminary, New York. 

SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE 
SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH, 

The subject proposed for consideration to-night 
by the Church Club, is Syrian Christianity and the 
School of Antioch. It will not have escaped your 
observation — possibly it may have been the occasion 
of not a little surprise — that in the arrangement of 
these lectures a marked prominence has been given 
to a portion of the Church of Christ which has 
passed into almost total oblivion, having long since 
ceased to take any active part in the world's affairs. 
The arrangement has not been accidental. It was 
thought desirable, in connection with the cumula- 
tive character of the argument which it is the aim of 
these lectures to present, to give marked prominence 
at the outset to the fact that, long before Greek 
Christianity had begun its course in the East — be- 
fore Roman Christianity had undertaken to play 
the part which it afterward did in the West — there 
3 



34 SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE 

was in existence a Church of which the Syrian 
Antioch was the centre and seat. In territorial ex- 
tent the Syrian Church extended from the Mediter- 
ranean Sea in the West to the Caucasian Mountains 
and the Caspian Sea in the East ; to the Erythrean 
Sea and the Persian Gulf on the South. It will be 
remembered, moreover, that Syrian Christianity 
was in an especial degree the creation of the great 
teacher of the Gentiles, S. Paul. It was at Anti- 
och, in Syria, that S. Paul first entered upon the 
active duties of his ministry. Antioch was the cen- 
tre of the first great missionary movement which 
had for its result the conversion of the Western 
world. The witness which a Church so widespread 
in its extent, and so mighty in its influence — Orien- 
tal, not Greek or Roman, in its character — bears to 
the primitive type of Christianity is of a peculiar 
kind. It is the witness of a Church which cannot 
be charged with excessive hierarchical pretension on 
the one hand, or with love of worldly power on the 
other. It brings us back to the Apostolic age, and 
the days when the Church, as the virgin bride of 
Christ, had not as yet entered into any entangling 
alliances with the powers of the world. Before 
Constantinople was founded — while Rome was still 
a pagan city — Antioch, for some three hundred 
years, was the centre of Christian influence for both 
East and West. 

There is another reason why the Church of Syria 
is to be recognized as of special value in any study 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. ' 35 

of the constitution and practice of the early Chris- 
tian Church. It would seem to have been the pur- 
pose of Divine Providence to make special provi- 
sion that the shoot, which in due course of time 
was to be transplanted from the Holy Land to 
grow and flourish in a foreign soil, should have pre- 
pared for its reception something of the nature of a 
forcing process, or hot-bed, where the plant will 
soon arrive at maturity, and opportunity shall also 
be given for everything of the nature of heretical 
pravity to develop itself speedily. It is a marked 
peculiarity of the Syrian Church in the East (as we 
shall find it to be also of the North African Church 
in the West,) that its disciples were men of warm 
and ardent temperament, who received Christianity 
with all the ardor and intensity of their nature, and 
were not satisfied to rest content with a religion of 
abstract propositions or mere logical conceptions. 
Christianity in Syria sprung in a moment, as it 
were, into a thriving and vigorous life. Churches 
grew and multiplied with a rapidity of which we 
know nothing in modern times. If they declined as 
rapidly as they came to life, it does not make the 
study of their growth and development less valu- 
able, but more so. 

When Jerusalem fell, Antioch became to the 
Christian world the centre of light and influence. 
It was at that time the third great city in the 
world. In some respects indeed it had no equal. 
Antioch could boast of three things which made it 



36 SYRIAN CHRISriANITY AND THE 

the pride and glory of ancient civilization. It had 
a situation unequalled, even by Constantinople it- 
self. It lay under the shadow of the Lebanon, only 
sixteen miles distant from the Mediterranean. It 
was watered by the cool stream of the Orontes. 
Libanius tells us that every house in Antioch had 
an abundant supply of water, and enjoyed the lux- 
ury of the bath. The main street of the city was 
four and a half miles in length, and was paved with 
magnificent stones, so that it surpassed the great 
Roman highways. A corridor ran throughout the 
whole length of the street, by which the inhabitants 
were at once guarded from the heat of the sun in 
summer, and from exposure to rain and snow in 
winter. Libanius tells us moreover that the whole 
of that magnificent thoroughfare was lighted with 
lamps, so that the night could scarcely be distin- 
guished from the day ; he adds that Antioch was 
the only city of the ancient world which was so 
lighted. It was to this city — the great summer re- 
sort of the nations of the earth — in luxury of living 
the Paris of the time — that the Christians fled for 
refuge when, upon the martyrdom of Stephen, they 
were compelled to abandon Jerusalem and had to 
seek a new centre for the extension of the Christian 
faith. It was here that S. Paul began his mission- 
ary work, and went forth to the conversion of the 
nations. 

The story is told of Alexander of Macedon, that 
he sat down to weep when he had no more worlds 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 37 

to conquer ; we all know what it is which makes the 
name of Caesar a name that is still remembered 
among men ; but what was the work of Alexander 
of Macedon, or the conquests of Julius Caesar, in 
comparison with the work which S. Paul, the great 
apostle and missionary of the Gentiles, set before 
him when he went forth from Antioch to plant the 
cross of Christ in every land ? Never until that 
hour had it entered into the heart of man to con- 
ceive of uniting all men in the bonds of a common 
brotherhood, by proclaiming God to be the Father 
of us all. When the Jew looked out upon the 
world and thought of its conversion, he thought 
only of national conquest. But when S. Paul ap- 
prehended in all its fulness the mystery of the cross 
of Christ, all thoughts of national barriers and dis- 
tinctions of race were obliterated and passed away 
forever. Antioch, for the first time in the history of 
mankind, became a missionary centre for the exten- 
sion of the Gospel throughout the world. It was, 
as we have already seen, a city specially fitted for be- 
coming the basis of operation for such a work. In 
situation it belonged to the Orient ; by conquest it 
had become Greek ; in course of time it passed from 
the Greeks into the hands of the Roman power. 
Antioch was in the broadest sense of the word a 
cosmopolitan city. Every country, every nationality 
had representatives there ; it was a place eminently 
fitted to become the seat of a Catholic religion — a 
centre of light and influence for the whole world. 



38 SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE 

I count myself happy that, in the arrangement of 
these lectures, I have had assigned to me for a sub- 
ject a topic of such very varied and surpassing in- 
terest as the Syrian Church and the see of Antioch. 
It would be difficult to find in all literature a more 
romantic story than that which is furnished by the 
history and fortunes of the Epistles of S. Ignatius, 
the second Bishop of the see of Antioch after the 
times of S. Peter and S. Paul. It was just after the 
discovery of the art of printing — about the year 
1497 — that there came to light in the West twelve 
epistles on which was inscribed the name of Igna- 
tius. In addition to these, five others were found 
which bore the same name, but which upon compar- 
ison proved to be spurious compilations of a later 
age. Some time after. Archbishop Usher, in the 
course of his investigations in England — I think 
about the year 1644 — discovered a Latin translation 
of the Seven Short Epistles (as they are called) of 
the great Syrian Father. Two years subsequently 
to this, there were discovered six Greek epistles by 
Vossius, which corresponded exactly with the Latin 
epistles of Archbishop Usher ; and the year fol- 
lowing, there was found in Florence an epistle of 
S. Ignatius to the Romans, which made the number 
of the seven short Greek epistles complete. Here, 
then, you have in existence twelve longer epistles in 
Latin claiming the name of Ignatius, with five ad- 
mitted on all sides to be spurious ; and seven 
shorter epistles, both in Greek and Latin, bearing the 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 39 

same honored name. The controversy on the whole 
subject of the Ignatian literature became at this time 
embittered by the introduction of a new element of 
religious strife. Upon the one side were arrayed 
those of the Continental Reformers who were op- 
posed to Episcopacy, and who were disposed with 
Calvin to denounce the whole thing as a figment 
of a later age ; on the other hand the great Pearson, 
in England, undertook the defence of the seven 
shorter epistles of Vossius and of Archbishop Usher. 
And now comes the third part of the story. In ad- 
dition to the twelve Latin epistles and the seven 
shorter epistles in Latin and in Greek, Archdeacon 
Tatham, when travelling in the Holy Land in the 
year 1843, discovered in a monastery three epistles 
of S. Ignatius written in Syriac, and of a still shorter 
form than the Greek and Latin epistles of Vossius 
and Usher. You have in existence, then (in addi- 
tion to the twelve original Latin epistles and the 
seven shorter epistles in Latin and in Greek), three 
Syriac epistles, differing from both in number and 
in form. 

The controversy in England now assumed a new 
shape ; the best scholars there (with the exception 
of the late Bishop of Lincoln) were disposed to ac- 
cept the three short Syriac epistles as the genuine 
remains of S. Ignatius. But, just as the minds of En- 
glish scholars were settling down in this conviction, 
Professor Peterman discovered an Armenian copy of 
the writings of Ignatius. This Armenian copy had 



40 SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE 

the seven shorter Epistles of Vossius and Archbishop 
Usher. 

The controversy entered again upon a new stage. 
The Bishop of Durham, the learned Dr. Lightfoot, 
had been disposed to accept the Syriac Epistles as 
the only genuine remains of S. Ignatius. But upon 
further consideration, after the discovery of Profes- 
sor Peterman, he was induced to undertake a new 
examination of the whole question of the Ignatian 
literature. For thirty years he prosecuted his task. 
He had search made in every part of the known 
world, wherever any trace of the writings of Ignatius 
could be found ; he examined, either in person or 
by deputy, every manuscript that was accessible 
in every library in Europe. The result has been the 
editing of the writings of the great Syriac Father, 
according to the best manuscripts, wherever found : 
and the declaration, after thirty years' of patient toil, 
upon authority that will not be questioned by any 
scholar of the nineteenth century, that the seven 
shorter Epistles of Vossius and of Archbishop 
Usher, as found in Latin and in Greek, are the true 
writings of S. Ignatius. 

I know of nothing, in the history of either sacred 
or profane literature, more interesting than this. For 
not less than four hundred years has the contro- 
versy over the genuine writings of S. Ignatius been 
going on. It is a controversy which has enlisted 
in it some of the greatest names of modern times, 
and must now be regarded as set at rest forever. 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH, 41 

But it is not the literature of the Ignatlan Epis- 
tles that chiefly interests us to-night. The contest 
regarding the validity of the writings of S. Ignatius 
has been so protracted (and at times so intensely 
bitter), for the reason that on the testimony of S. 
Ignatius, more than any other of the early Fathers, 
depends the settlement of the vexed question of the 
Apostolic origin of the Episcopate, in opposition to 
the Calvinistic theory of Presbyterian Ordination. 
It is our own good fortune that in our day and gen- 
eration that question has been finally settled. We 
are able to produce as a witness one who was the 
familiar and friend of a well-known disciple of S. 
John — the last link between the Apostolic and the 
post-Apostolic age. The witness is one, you will 
permit me again to remind you, who belongs neither 
to the later Greek Church of the East, nor to the 
Roman Church, but represents the earlier and virgin 
age of the Church, when the light kindled by S. 
John in Asia Minor still burned with an intense and 
ardent flame. What then is the testimony which S. 
Ignatius gives regarding the Church's unity, and as 
to the means of preserving it unbroken for the gen- 
erations yet to come ? In every one of his Epistles 
Ignatius asserts, with reiterated emphasis, that the 
Episcopate is the great bond of moral unity ; that 
apart from the bishop, there is no approach to the 
altar; no way of entering into fellowship with 
the Church of the living God. To judge aright of 
the value of his testimony, you must call to mind 



42 SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE 

the way in which it reaches us, and the pecuh'ar 
circumstances under which it was given. What is 
the nature of these Seven Short Epistles of S. Igna- 
tius ? What were the circumstances under which 
they were written ? What was the object of the 
writer in setting them forth ? Let us bring S. Ig- 
natius himself as a witness into court (I am 
speaking in the ears of men skilled in taking testi- 
mony, and who know the value of evidence), and 
let us examine him regarding his object in the writ- 
ing of these letters — the time and the place when 
and where they were first given to the world. 
" What object had you, Ignatius, in the writing of 
these Epistles ? " "I wrote them," he answers, " as 
simple letters, declaring what I found upon my jour- 
ney from Antioch (of which city I was the Bishop) to 
Rome, where I was called to die for the truth, as it 
is in Jesus, in the ninth year of the reign of the 
Emperor Trajan, and the fortieth year of my 
Episcopate." " The journey from Antioch to Rome 
is a long one — what course did you take, and what 
incidents of importance befel you by the way ? " 
" We took the usual route from Antioch to Seleucia, 
and proceeded thence by sea. We stopped to rest 
at Smyrna, and I was glad to avail myself of the 
opportunity to visit the holy Polycarp, then Bishop 
of the Smyrnaeans. Three of the neighboring 
Bishops, with their Presbyters and Deacons, when 
they heard of my arrival, came to see me, and I 
availed myself of the opportunity to send greeting 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 43 

to the Churches of Asia Minor." " Why did you 
write these letters to the Philadelphians, to the 
Magnesians, to the Trallians, and to the Church at 
Rome ? " "I wrote them because the men who had 
me in their toils would not permit me to take these 
Churches in my way, and I was especially anxious 
that the brethren at Rome should not do anything 
to prevent my receiving the Crown of Martyrdom 
for which I longed." *' Did you make any other 
stops besides that at Smyrna ? " " Yes, we halted 
again at Troas, and there I had the chance to write 
to the Churches of Ephesus and Smyrna, and to 
Polycarp." " Who was this Polycarp, to whom 
you paid such honor and respect ?" " Polycarp was, 
as I have said, Bishop of Smyrna, and he was the 
disciple of S. John, the last link in the line of the 
men of the past generation. He had been privileged 
to sit at the feet of the Beloved Disciple, and to 
hear from his own lips the things which had been 
taught him by his dear Lord and Master." 

Such is the simple story of Ignatius and his jour- 
ney to Rome. It will be observed that in writing 
his epistles, Ignatius was not writing a book to prove 
the existence of the Episcopate. He never thought 
of such a thing. There is no thought of contro- 
versy in his mind. He is upon a journey and he 
tells us in simple letters what he found upon his 
way. He gives you the names of the Churches, and 
he tells you that in every Church with which he was 
brought into contact in Asia Minor, he found exist- 



44 SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE 

ing Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. He gives you 
the names of the Churches and their Bishops. The 
Churches which he addresses (with the exception of 
Rome) had Ephesus for their centre. It was at 
Ephesus that S. John, the last of the Apostles, spent 
the last years of his life. He was left, while the 
others were taken away by violent deaths, that he 
might perfect the organization of the Church. He 
left behind him in Smyrna his disciple Polycarp. 
It was to Polycarp, Ignatius (who began the work 
of his ministry probably in the year 70 and carried 
it on for forty years, to the year 1 10) left the care of 
the Church of Antioch ; and, as a successor of the 
apostles, gave it into his hands. 

Take into consideration the whole of the circum- 
stances connected with the writing of these Epistles 
of S. Ignatius, and you will agree with me, if I mis- 
take not, in thinking that the evidence of such a 
witness to the existence of a threefold order of min- 
istry in his day is indisputable and complete. 

So much for the nature of the evidence itself. 
But why does Ignatius contend, as he confessedly 
does, for the divine origin of the Episcopate ? Is 
he maintaining a theory ? or is he dealing with a 
felt necessity, and an incontrovertible fact ? The 
reason which Ignatius himself gives is that the exist- 
ence of the Episcopate was necessary to the integrity 
of the faith, and to its perpetuation unadulterated 
to succeeding generations. The Episcopate, in the 
judgment of Ignatius, is the representative of the 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 45 

great principle of moral unity, and is accordingly 
the divinely ordained safeguard against all heretical 
pravity, and schismatical division in the family of 
God. 

Let us look for a moment at the religious world 
as Ignatius found it in his day and generation. 
There were not less than some three hundred and 
sixty schools of thought in existence at the time. 
Nor were the philosophical teachers of the age mere 
dialecticians : they were moral teachers, and they 
professed to show men the way to lead a happier 
and a better life. Three hundred and sixty schools ! 
One for every day in the year almost. But worse 
than the philosophers themselves, and more dif- 
ficult to deal with, were the men who, under the 
names of Gnostics, or Rationalists, as we should call 
them now, sought to mingle together religion and 
philosophy, and set up schools and systems of their 
own to take the place of the Church of the Apostles. 
Now it is in opposition to these corrupters of the 
faith, Ignatius asserts the principle that Christian- 
ity is not an abstract or philosophical system, but 
involves in its very inception the idea of moral obe- 
dience. The doctrines of Christianity, he main- 
tains, are neither more nor less than the logical ex- 
ponents of its facts ; and it is to the facts of the 
supernatural birth, and miraculous life, and atoning 
death of the Lord Jesus, that the apostles, and their 
successors in the Catholic Church (a phrase for the 
first time met with in the Epistles of S. Ignatius) 



46 SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE 

were ordained to bear witness. It is not only, or 
chiefly, the truth of the doctrine that we have to 
consider (for that were to reduce Christianity to a 
speculative system), but primarily and first of all, 
we have to deal with the credibility and character 
of the witnesses. It was to bear witness that the 
apostles were chosen and set apart by Christ as the 
Sent of God ; it was to perpetuate their testimony 
that the apostles, when called away, chose and set 
apart others to take their place. It will be seen at 
a glance, then, why Ignatius insists, as he does, upon 
obedience to the Bishop as the only true mark of 
Christian fellowship. It was not with him a question 
of mere truth and error — for there were many things 
which Christianity had in common with the schools 
of the philosophers — the real question at issue was, 
whether the professed teacher was an accredited wit- 
ness to the truth as it had been received from the 
apostles, and was in possession of the due authority 
to educate and train up in the faith those who had 
been baptized into the name of Jesus. It was, in 
other words, a moral and historical question, involv- 
ing habits of moral obedience and humility, and not 
a question of the reception of mere abstract truths 
and speculations. The Episcopate was the guardian 
of the faith, because it was the duly certified witness 
to the facts to which the apostles bore witness. It 
was not, it will be observed, a question of " tactual 
succession," as has been profanely said ; nor was it a 
question of mere ecclesiastical arrangement ; it was to 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 47 

the men of that age a question involving the credi- 
bility of witness, and the determination of the fact, 
whether the person professing to guide and to teach 
had entered in by the door, and was sent by the 
true Shepherd of the sheep ; or had climbed up some 
other way, and had stamped upon him the brand of 
a thief and robber. A single illustration will make 
our meaning plain. The origin and nature of evil 
was one of the questions hotly disputed in the early 
days of Christianity, as it is now, and has been ever 
since. The Gnostic teachers of the time, without 
exception, held to the doctrine of dualism and the 
eternity of matter : this was the generally received 
doctrine of all philosophical schools, both East and 
West. Christianity too taught a belief in the ex- 
istence of evil, but denied that Evil was eternal, or 
that it had any existence in itself apart from the 
Good. It was to meet this error of the Gnostic 
teachers of the age that the first article was inserted 
in the Creed, affirming the sovereign power of God 
the Father Almighty, and declaring Him to be the 
maker of all things both in heaven and earth. The 
article in the Creed was no empty profession of faith , 
it was no mere assertion of an abstract doctrine or 
belief. It had to be recited by every candidate for 
baptism, and was solemnly delivered to the catechu- 
men, on the eve of their baptism, by the Bishop him- 
self as the head of the congregation and the keeper of 
the faith. The faith then was not Embodied as it is 
now, a written formula, but was orally delivered by 



48 SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE 

the living witness to the apostolic tradition ; and was 
openly confessed by the person seeking admission, 
before the whole Church. The bond between the 
recipient and the bestower was a living and personal 
bond, and of necessity involved living and personal 
relationships of loyalty and faith, and obedience to 
the authoritative witness to the belief of the Catho- 
lic Church, in opposition to the men who were 
tainted with the rationalism of the philosophic 
schools. In other words, in historical Christianity 
you cannot separate the faith, as it is authoritatively 
set forth in the Creed of the Church, from the 
teacher; and the teacher, in opposition to the 
many-voiced Babel of speculative rationalism, is, ac- 
cording to the teachings of the Epistles of S. Ignatius, 
the Bishop, as the representative of the moral unity 
of the whole body of the Church. 

Will you say to me — This may all be true, but 
Gnosticism is a thing of the past ; times differ, and 
men in the nineteenth century cannot be dealt with 
as men in the ninth century, and the primitive ages 
of the Church. I answer — The moral nature of man 
is the same in every age, requires the same spiritual 
remedies. Error now is the same as it was at first ; 
the name and the appearance may change, but the 
substance is the same. I hold in my hand a book 
entitled, " The Ten Religions of the World." It is 
written by one of the ablest representatives of mod- 
ern thought, whose boast is that he is free from the 
trammels of tradition, and is in advance of the spirit 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 49 

of the past. What then does this teacher — who looks 
upon Christianity as another philosophy, and com- 
pares it with the religious systems of Confucius and 
Zoroaster, and Buddha — tell us about the problem 
of good and evil ? What is his solution of the mys- 
tery ; and how does it differ from the Rationalistic 
and Gnostic systems of the early days of Christian- 
ity? This then is the answer which James Free- 
man Clarke gives to the question, in the city of Bos- 
ton, in the nineteenth century : " Some of the diffi- 
culties which we find in the actual constitution of 
things would be removed," he says, " if we accept the 
view that, while God is the creator and preserver of 
the universe as a whole, he has permitted beings in- 
ferior to himself, but vastly superior to man, to carry 
on the work of creation in subordination to his own 
universal laws. In a previous chapter we have seen 
how probable it is, that there is an immense hierar- 
chy of intelligences extending upward from man 
toward God. Some of these may possess such large 
wisdom, such resources of reason, and insight as to be 
able, by making use of God's laws, to create new races 
of plants and animals such as we see in the earth. 
They would be creators under God just as man is a 
creator under God. Man's inventions are creations. 
Man has invented the plow, the pump, the carriage, 
the ship, by making himself acquainted with what 
we call the laws of nature. But these laws are only 
the ever-present agency of God. He fills all in all. 
He holds the universe in every atom by the mys- 
4 



50 SYRIAN- CHRISTIANITY AND THE 

terlous power of gravitation. And though man, in 
his higher nature, derives his being directly from God, 
as the idea of right, of wrong, cause and effect, and 
the reason which contains the light of the infinite 
and eternal, testify, yet his lower bodily nature, by 
which he is allied to other animals, may have been 
gradually developed by the inventive powers of sub- 
ordinate beings." It seems incredible, and yet it is 
true, that a professedly Christian teacher in the 
nineteenth century puts forth exactly the same 
theory of a Demiourgos or world-maker, to account 
for the mystery of evil, which the Gnostic teachers 
Saturninus, Basilides, and Valentinus of the first ages 
of the Church set forth in their day. It is a denial 
of the first article of the Christian faith, and is the 
very same " theory " of " the constitution of things " 
which that article was expressly framed to condemn. 
The writer doubtless would deny that he intended 
to contravene by his theory the fundamental verities 
of the Christian faith ; but his denial does not affect 
the question that the dogmas of the Christian Church 
are one thing, the philosophical speculations of ra- 
tionalistic teachers another and a very different 
thing — that there is no hope of return to Christian 
unity except on the bases of the Apostles' Creed, and 
the recognition of some properly constituted author- 
ity to set at naught the vain speculations of ignorant 
and foolish men. Nor let our object be mistaken in 
making such a claim. It is not the case that the 
Church has ever deliberately set out to make a creed, 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCFI. $1 

or has ever sought to impose her own arbitrary decrees 
upon the consciences of men. Had she been only- 
left to do her proper work, the Church would gladly 
have rested in her implicit beliefs, and would v/il- 
lingly have been spared the trouble of calling her 
bishops from one end of the earth to the other to 
give explicit expression to the articles of her faith. 
It was unbelief, and the gainsaying of unlearned and 
foolish men, which compelled the Church to formu- 
late the faith. There is not an article of the Creed 
which the Church has ever made out of whole cloth 
(if you will permit me so to speak). If the Church 
has ever formulated the faith, it was because she was 
forced so to do in opposition to the efforts made to 
draw men away from the simplicity and integrity of 
the faith into the acceptance of the fine-spun theories 
of the teachers of error. It is as true of every article 
of the Creed as it is of the first article, that it had 
its origin in some perversion of the faith ; and it may 
with truth be affirmed that no person to-day is com- 
petent to give an intelligent opinion regarding the 
faith, as it is embodied in the Creed of the Church, 
who is ignorant of the nature of the error which it 
is the aim of the several articles to controvert. It 
is this that makes the work of Archbishop King 
upon the Creed of inestimable value to the proper 
understanding of the faith. 

I have taken an illustration from the doctrinal 
and speculative sphere to prove the necessity that 
exists of our having recourse to the teaching and 



52 SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE 

polity of the Apostolic Age, if we are ever to reach 
any sure basis for the restoration of the unity of 
Christendom. I shall now, with your permission, 
take another illustration from the liturgical and de- 
votional sphere, in proof of a similar necessity, in 
things affecting the polity and practice of the 
Church. It was a surprise to many of us to hear, as 
we have lately been informed by a distinguished de- 
nominational teacher of our own city, that Easter — 
the glorious festival of the resurrection — is a com- 
pound of heathenism and Judaism, and is to be re- 
jected by educated Christian men as a relic of the 
dark ages. It is surely to be regretted that, at a time 
when men would seem to be striving together in an 
effort to secure Christian unity, such a statement 
should have been made. If Easter-tide were only a 
religious sentiment, it might surely claim respectful 
consideration from all believing in the fact of the 
Resurrection ; but when it is capable of proof, that 
the settlement of the Easter question in opposition 
to Judaism is one of the best attested facts of early, 
primitive Christianity, we can only wonder at the 
way in which religious prejudice can pervert the 
minds of men, and raise up barriers of separation 
which it is not even in the power of historical 
criticism to overcome. The early Church had its 
ritualistic controversies even as we have them now. 
The great question which agitated the Church, for 
the first three hundred years of its existence, was the 
proper time for the keeping of the Easter festival. 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. 53 

There was, in the Syrian church and In the churches 
of Asia Minor, a strong Ebionitish or Jewish party, 
made up chiefly of Hebrew converts and their 
sympathizers, who contended that the Christian 
church should follow the example of the Jewish 
church, and keep the great festival of Redemption on 
the 14th day of Nisan — the day of the Jewish pass- 
over — on whatever day of the week the 14th of 
Nisan might fall. There was much in favor of such 
a practice. On the other hand, there were reasons 
why the Christian feast should not be kept on the 
same day as the Jewish passover. It was desirable, 
in the first place, to draw as markedly as possible 
the line of difference between Judaism and Christi- 
anity. It was for this reason that Christians from 
the first did not keep the seventh day of the week 
as the day for their religious convocations ; but the 
first day of the week — the day of the Resurrection. 
It was thought desirable also to give marked promi- 
nence to the truth, that Christianity is not only 
the completion of the old sacrificial and legal 
economy, but is also the beginning of a new 
economy — the entering in of a new life, and the set- 
ting up of a new kingdom in the world. And for 
this reason again, the feast ought to take place at the 
beginning of the week and not, in any case, toward 
its close. For three hundred years the fight went 
on between the Friday, as we may say, or the Sun- 
day after. It was not an easy question to settle. 
Regard must be had to the prejudices of the Hebrew 



54 SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE 

converts upon the one hand, and upon the other 
nothing must be left undone to assert the great 
principle that, in rising again from the dead our 
Lord rose as the head of the new creation, and the 
beginning of a new system of things: it was found 
necessary to symbolize the truth that the Church of 
Christ is above all else a Catholic Church which 
knows no people nor nationality, but accords equal 
privileges to Jew and to Greek, to barbarian and 
civilized, to bound and to free. We find the matter 
in dispute as early as the time of Polycarp, the 
disciple of S. John. Polycarp went to Rome to 
hold counsel about the matter with Anicetus. Poly- 
carp contended that the churches of Asia Minor 
must be left to follow their own customs, which 
had been taught them, he said, by S. John when 
from Ephesus he ruled over the churches within his 
reach. The bishop of Rome agreed that it was 
best for the present that the East should follow its 
own traditions, and he allowed the venerable Poly- 
carp to celebrate the Easter festival in the city of 
Rome after his own way. 

But the lapse of time brought a change both in 
Asia Minor, and in Rome and the West. It is one 
thing to yield for the time being, in a conciliatory 
spirit, to the prejudiced and the weak ; it is another, 
to sacrifice an important principle when the occasion 
has passed away for a reasonable demand for requir- 
ing the sacrifice. In the time of Victor it was felt 
that there was no reason why the East should con- 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH, 55 

tinue any longer to differ from the West in keeping 
the Easter festival. Victor accordingly commanded 
Christians everywhere, on pain of excommunication, 
to keep the feast on the same Sunday, and not the 
exact day of the fourteenth of Nisan. Polycrates — 
at that time the successor of S. John in Ephesus — 
went up to Rome to defend the ancient privi- 
leges of the churches of Asia Minor, and to ask that 
their liberties, if not their prejudices, should be con- 
sidered in the matter. The spirit of Victor was dif- 
ferent from that of Anicetus, and he refused to yield 
any longer in the point at issue. When Irenaeus, 
who was himself from Asia Minor, and had succeeded 
Pothinus in Gaul, heard of the action of Victor of 
Rome, he wrote to him and begged of him not to 
divide the Church for such a trifling question as 
the day for celebrating the Easter festival. Victor 
yielded, and the threatened excommunication was 
suspended. It is not, then, the case that the Easter 
festival of the Christian Church is a compound of 
Judaism and Paganism. The reverse of this, as the 
facts of the case prove, is true. 

But the controversy has an interest for us over and 
above its ritualistic value. It confirms the princi- 
ple which the Anglican Church has always main- 
tained in its controversy with Rome. We take our 
stand to-day on precisely the same ground which 
Polycarp and Polycrates did, as to the right of a 
national church to order its own internal affairs 
without any breach of unity. As to the great out- 



56 SYRIAN CHRISTIANITY AND THE 

lying body of Protestantism, we have no wish to re- 
vive past controversies ; or to deal with the ques- 
tions at issue in any other spirit than that of love 
and Christian charity. Our prayer is that God, in 
His own good time, will reunite again divided Chris- 
tendom in one fold, under one Shepherd. It is not 
a question of mere ecclesiastical arrangement, much 
less of worldly power ; it is a practical question to 
which history and experience bear witness. In 
unity there is strength ; in division and strife, ruin 
and loss. We only repeat the words of the Master 
when we affirm that " if a house be divided against 
itself that house cannot stand." If it be true that, 
if Satan be divided against Satan, his kingdom can- 
not stand, it is likewise true that God cannot be di- 
vided against Himself. He is a lover of unity, and 
not the author of confusion. Why do we want or- 
ganic unity ? We want it for the reason that it is 
necessary for the preservation of the faith, even as 
it is for the development and growth of the life of 
the Church. Without it the Church has no power 
to contend with the world, or to withstand the dis- 
integrating forces of self-will and heretical tendencies 
among her own children. The remark of Guizot re- 
garding the fifth century is also true when applied 
to the nineteenth century. Had it not been for the 
organism of the Christian Church, Guizot tells us, 
the world must have perished and the social fabric 
suffered utter disintegration when the Roman Em- 
pire was crushed under the feet of the barbarians. 



SCHOOL OF ANTIOCH. S7 

Had Christianity then been a thing of mere indi- 
vidual feeling, and not, as it was, a great social 
power knit together by joints and bands, it never 
could have risen above the wreck of the nations of 
the earth when the Goths took possession of the 
empire. " Humanly speaking," Guizot says, " it was 
the Christian Church that saved Christianity ; . . 
it was the Christian Church, with its institutions, its 
magistrates, its authority ; the Christian Church 
which struggled so vigorously to prevent the interior 
dissolution of the empire, which struggled against 
barbarism, and, in fact, overcame the barbarian ; it 
was the Church . . . which became the great 
connecting link — the principle of civilization be- 
tween the Roman and the barbarian world." The 
verdict of history we claim is, that there must be 
in the world some abiding power, some organic 
agency above that of mere individualism, or else so- 
ciety will go to ruin. Represent it by what formula 
you may, the idea of moral unity for which Ignatius 
in his day contended, and the Church of England 
fought in her struggle with non-conformity, is essen- 
tial to the very idea of the Church, and is the only 
spiritual force which can knit together into one the 
divided members of Christendom. 



Zbc IRortb Hfrican Cburcb anb ita 



LECTURE III. 

REV. J. F. GARRISON, D,D., 
Professor of Liturgies in the Divinity School, Philadelphia. 

THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH AND 
ITS TEACHERS, 

The subject of this lecture is The North African 
Church and its Teachers, with special reference to 
" a basis for the reunion of Christendom." 

From the changes that have occurred in the scenes 
and nationalities of history, it may seem strange to 
many of the present day to hear that North Africa 
had ever played a prominent part in the progress of 
the Church, or had been profoundly related to the 
development of our modern civilization. For cen- 
turies past Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and the 
states contiguous to them on the Northern African 
shore of the Mediterranean Sea, have been known 
to Europe and America only by the worthlessness 
and viciousness of a marauding, piratical population ; 
and the conquest and annexation of several of these 
countries as provinces by France and Italy has been 
regarded as equally a benefit to the people whom 
they have conquered, and a relief to the commerce 



62 THE NORTH AFRICAN- CHURCH 

of the Mediterranean from their constant annoyance 
and pillage. 

But it was far otherwise in the days of the later 
Roman Republic, and even (though with widely dif- 
ferent conditions) under the Empire for four hundred 
years and more after the beginning of the Christian 
era. 

In its prime North Africa was the seat of Car- 
thage, the home of the mightiest enemy that the 
Republic of Rome ever knew, and although sub- 
dued and destroyed as an independent power and a 
rival, it had revived from its ashes and was one of 
the most populous and important provinces of the 
later Republic and the Empire. And Carthage, now 
transformed in all respects into a Roman city, was 
second throughout the whole West only to Rome 
itself in elegance, culture, population, and display. 

The area of North Africa as a proconsular juris- 
diction was somewhat over two thousand miles in 
length, with an average breadth of about three hun- 
dred miles between the sea and the desert. From 
its location and climate, this province had become 
one of the chief granaries whence Rome and Italy 
drew their supplies of food, and as a consequence, 
its territory was occupied by a wealthy and pros- 
perous people. It was dotted along all its sea-coast 
with large and elegant cities, and towns of no mean 
pretensions abounded in every part of the province. 

Christianity must have been introduced into 
North Africa very early, and with great success ; for 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 63 

when it first comes to the notice of history, its ad- 
herents were already exceedingly numerous, and 
everywhere, throughout the province, they had long 
been organized into dioceses and local parishes, and 
constituted a compact and efficient power in every 
important city and town. 

The period at which the North African Church 
thus first appears in history, was about the year 200, 
or a little before ; and it continued to play a most 
distinguished part in the thought and life of the 
Church, until about the middle of the fifth century, 
when, with all of the Western Empire, it was buried 
and for a while almost forgotten under the suc- 
cessive waves of the Barbarians. This period of 
two hundred and fifty years during which the North 
African Church is prominent, was marked and 
spanned by the lives of three of the most renowned 
teachers of the Western Church. These three men 
were Tertullian, with whom the period begins ; Cy- 
prian, who marks about its middle ; and Augustine, 
with whom it comes to its close. 

The North African Church, at the time of its 
greatest prosperity, numbered some four hundred 
and sixty dioceses in union with the Catholic 
Church and under its authority ; while there was 
an almost equal number of bishops who ruled over 
the congregations of an extensive and disastrous 
schism, which for a long period prevailed in North 
Africa, and is known in ecclesiastical history as 
Donatism. 



64 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

This has seemed to many so extravagantly large 
a number as to be almost incredible. But so popu- 
lous and rich was the country in these centuries, 
that Bingham asserts there could have been an 
average of seventy or eighty large towns and vil- 
lages to each diocese of the Catholic Bishops, and 
that the geographical area of the several jurisdic- 
tions would, on the same average, be about one-half 
that of the ordinary French diocese of to-day. 

The first of the three great teachers by whom 
the African Church was made illustrious was, as 
already said, Tertullian ; and it is with his writ- 
ings, his public life, and his surroundings, from A.D. 
192 to 220 or 225, that we must begin. Septimius 
Florens Tertullianus was born in Carthage about 
A.D. 150 or 160. His family were pagans, his father 
an officer in the Imperial army, evidently a man of 
means, able and willing to give his son the best 
education that the times could afford him. The 
lad was familiar with the poetry, and learned in 
the philosophy and history of the great Greek mas- 
ters, and himself both talked and wrote the Greek. 
He seems to have been trained especially for the 
profession of a lawyer, and became famous in his 
early manhood for his knowledge of the Roman 
Law and his ability as an advocate. 

As he was not converted until near middle life 
(thirty-five or forty) and his family were heathens, 
he was fully acquainted with the scenes and influ- 
ences of the theatre and the arena, and shared more 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 6$ 

or less the dissipation and profligacy which then 
marked so much of the social life of the heathen. 
He was thus early familiar, by his own experience, 
with the very evils and sins of which in his matur- 
er life he was to be so stern a censor ; he was also 
furnished, by the wide range of his studies and his 
own elaborate and careful mental training, with the 
weapons of which he made so powerful a use in his 
after-years of Christian teaching and controversy. 

Doubtless also, being a North African, he inher- 
ited by birth, like many other of the Carthaginian 
families, traits derived from the fierce, fiery peoples 
who were the ancient inhabitants of Carthage. And 
after his conversion he devoted himself to the de- 
fence of Christianity, as he understood it, in pre- 
cisely the spirit with which Hamilcar swore his son 
Hannibal, upon the altar of the gods, to an eternal 
and implacable hostility and warfare with Rome. 

But Tertullian was not only the first of the illus- 
trious leaders of the North African Church, he was 
also, what is vastly more important, the first of the 
great Latin writers and teachers of the Church of 
the West. 

Christianity, the Church, both had their origin 
and found their early home in the East. They be- 
longed to Asia, to Palestine, and Syria, not to Eu- 
rope. The language too, the Greek, in which their 
sacred records were written, although in name Euro- 
pean, had virtually become, since the conquest of 
Alexander, an Oriental language ; and in the time 
5 



66 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

of the Apostles was, as it continued for a long period 
after, the common medium of literary intercourse 
for all Asia from the Euphrates to the Mediterra- 
nean ; and was used by all the cultivated thinkers of 
Alexandria and Egypt. It was this prominent posi- 
tion of the Greek in this age which caused all the 
authoritative scriptures of the Church to be written 
in that language; and it seems also to have led cer- 
tain of the portions of the Church, where the Greek 
was not thus familiar to the people, to allow it for a 
time to restrain them from the use of their own 
tongue in their v/ritings or discussions on matters 
relating to Christianity. 

The preaching of the Gospel was extended to 
Rome and other parts of the West before the death 
of S. Peter and S. Paul. But while the Church 
was thus extended very early into the West, and 
grew very rapidly in all the western provinces of the 
Roman Empire, which we now know as England, 
France, Spain, Italy, and North Africa, it is a fact to 
be noted as a consequence of the influences already 
mentioned, that from the foundation of the Church 
to the end of the third century, with rare excep- 
tions, all the great works on Theology as well as the 
universal creeds of the Church had been produced 
in the East — in Syria, Asia Minor, or Alexandria — 
and were all written in Greek. 

During all this long period, when the Church was 
discussing with intense zeal the new conceptions 
about God and man which the revelations of the 



AND ITS TEACHERS, 6/ 

Gospel had awakened in men, when the Christian 
world was struggling with eager desire to compre- 
hend the most fully and express the most clearly, 
the great doctrines which were to constitute its 
future Theology and the forms of the creeds in 
which these should be embodied for all after-ages, 
during all this long and vitally important period of 
three hundred years, in which the foundations of 
Christian philosophy and Christian theology were 
being laid you may question the whole line of the 
Bishops of Rome and not find one really able or 
noteworthy contribution to the vast work Avhich 
was being done by the Church in the East and in 
the Greek language. Nor had the rest of the 
Church in Western Europe been greatly more active 
in this work of the early ages of Christianity than the 
Bishops and Clergy of Rome. Iren^us and Hippo- 
lytus had both written notable works, and on mat- 
ters of considerable moment in the history of the 
Church, and they both lived in the West ; but not- 
withstanding this, the language of all their known 
writings was Greek, and wellnigh all that makes 
these of real value came to them from their early 
and intimate acquaintance with the thoughts and 
modes of expression, as well as the language and 
church literature, of the East. 

The only real exceptions to this, not very credita- 
ble, lack in the Western Church, were in North 
Africa. It is to Tertullian (about A.D. 200) we 
must give the high place of being first in the series 



68 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

of great teachers of Christianity who afterward wrote 
in Latin. And, although there was no adequate 
treatment of theology as a whole in the West until 
two hundred and fifty years later, in the writings of 
Augustine, yet in Tertullian we have the begin- 
ning of a true Western theology, presented too, for 
the first time, in forms of thought familiar to the 
West, and in a language known to that portion of 
the Church. 

The condition of the heathen world in Tertullian s 
age, and the necessities of the Western or Latin- 
speaking Church, both called imperatively for this 
phase of Christian teaching, and his character and 
training, as we have already traced them, were such 
as eminently fitted him to begin the work. 

The life-force of the old civilizations East and 
West, Gaul, Rome, and Africa, as well as Greece, 
Syria, and Egypt, was utterly exhausted ; the old 
religious faiths were dead ; their outer forms had 
continued only as state ceremonials to please the 
mob, or from a grovelling superstition which feared 
some unknown evil if it should abandon them ; the 
old systems of philosophy were powerless for any 
other use than mere word play or a pretence of eru- 
dition ; the only school in the pagan world that 
then or afterward made any impression on the 
minds of men was that known as the Alexandrian 
or new Platonic philosophy. No greater name 
had appeared among the Greek thinkers, since 
the days of Plato and Aristotle, than its brilliant 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 69 

master Plotinus. The system he taught in Rome 
soon after the death of Tertullian — and as if to pre- 
sent the best that was possible in Heathen thought 
in rivalry with the beginning of the new life that 
had come from the Gospel — was of rare beauty, 
sublimity, and excellence. Yet so wholly unable 
were the old lines of thought to retain their power 
over the mind of the world, that its momentary 
flash of splendor was only that of a sun illumining 
the clouds behind which it was soon to sink in dark- 
ness and forever. 

With the breaking up of the old religions and old 
philosophies had come also the loss of all the ac- 
customed restraints of the moral and social customs 
which belonged to them. The conquest of all na- 
tions had made Rome and her near provinces the 
centre of the conquered world. She brought their 
innumerable gods to the imperial city and set them 
in the Pantheon. She dragged her captives there as 
slaves, and spread them broadcast by the millions 
over Italy and Africa. Degraded by their slavery 
and desperate in their wretchedness, these misera- 
bles in every sense sought only to curry favor with 
their masters by pandering to every vice and min- 
gling into one horrid slough the infamies, the 
crimes, the debaucheries of every people. 

The lords of the far provinces, or Roman ofificlals 
(corrupted by residing there), flocked also around 
the capital, each rivalling the other in extravagance 
of display and in unnamable, almost unthinkable 



70 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

pollution of themselves and all who came in con- 
tact with their vileness. 

Gibbon says (in, 112): " The capital attracted all 
the vices of the universe. The intemperance of the 
Goths, the cunning of the Greeks, the savage ob- 
stinacy of the Egyptians and Jews, the servile tem- 
per of the Asiatics, the effeminate prostitution of 
the Syrians," all were commingled in this various 
multitude. It was an age, too, of luxury and ex- 
travagance of living which we, with all our concep- 
tions of millionaires and expenditure, can hardly re- 
produce even in imagination. It was a time also of 
high art, at least if art consist, as some appear to 
think, in painting all that can inflame the passions, 
and suggest evil to the mind, instead of that which 
seeks to give expression to the true, and pure, and 
noble as essential elements of beauty. Art was 
seen everywhere; the walls were alive with pictures 
— outside as well as in — the floor as often as the 
ceiling. 

So also literature (such as it was) abounded ; per- 
haps books never were so numerous or so universally 
read in any age or part of the world, except in the 
last century or two, as in the period of which we 
speak. Yet, with all these elements of culture, 
these agencies of " sweetness and light " which so 
many now believe to be the needed new gospel for 
the race, literature, art, the cosmopolite mingling 
of all nations, and all faiths and no faith in any, so 
far were they from humanizing and beautifying so- 



AND ITS TEACHERS, *J1 

ciety and life, that earth never saw such Inhumanity 
and brutalizing cruelty as marked these centuries 
in the great cities of the Roman Empire and cer- 
tain of its provinces ; cruelty too, without reason, 
without even the excuse of fanaticism or hate ; 
cruelty solely, simply because all moral and religious 
bonds once cast aside, the brute in his ravening, 
starved moods, becomes the man. 

The Roman lady had her slave maid (often a cap- 
tive reared in her far off home as delicately as her- 
self) stand as she made her toilet with bared shoul- 
ders, that the thongs of the angry mistress, tipped 
with iron, might cut more surely into the blood for 
every slight mistake. Men racked their serfs with 
pitiless vengeance on any occasion, or even without 
occasion, whenever the passion of a cruel master in- 
flamed him to brutality, or the fears of a timid ty- 
rant impelled him to a course of terrorism. Men 
and women, ten, fifty, or eighty thousand of them, 
would sit in the amphitheatre day after day, week 
after week, to gaze on the ferocious combats of wild 
beasts one with another; or, when satiated with what 
had now become the dull monotony of a death- 
fight between tigers, they desired a keener stimulus 
would call for men to fight each other — men not 
allowed clothing, that the death-wounds might be 
more easily given — who fought, each murdering and 
murdered until there were none left who could mur- 
der or be murdered. Nor was this all. In the 
time of Tertullian it was no uncommon thing for 



72 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

the wild cry of the mob to call out " The Christians 
to the lions ! The Christians to the lions 1 " — and in 
this very city of Carthage, in the very amphitheatre 
where Tertullian had sat (as he shudderingly tells 
us) in his early years, two delicate young mothers, 
Perpetua and Felicitas, scarce out of their teens, 
were dragged into the arena before the bloodthirsty 
throng and tossed on the horns of mad wild cattle, 
until the soldiers, in pure mercy, ended their appal- 
ling agonies with the sword ; and perhaps the most 
terrible sentence in the whole frightful narrative, 
written, too, in all probability by Tertullian himself, 
is " the populace called for them (when about to re- 
ceive their death-stroke) to come into the middle of 
the arena, that, as the sword penetrated their body, 
they (the multitude) might make their eyes partners 
in the murder." 

It was into the old world thus debauched, soul- 
less, and degraded, with all its refinement and cult- 
ure, thus effeminate, cowardly, and cruel, notwith- 
standing its high art and universal literature, that 
Tertullian was born. And it was from this (and with 
a thorough knowledge of its mingled splendor and 
vileness) that, about his fortieth year, he was con- 
verted to Christianity and baptized into the Church. 

We know not whether this great revolution in his 
life was made at Carthage or Rome, but we know, 
from what has already been shown of him, that he 
did nothing by halves. When he had once seized 
the divine significance and worth of Christianity, he 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 73 

gave himself to it with all his intense nature and all 
his large acquirements ; and from the beginning it 
so possessed his entire being that he saw nothing \\\ 
the whole world worth a thought, nothing worth hav- 
ing or worth living for, but the Gospel. And even 
while yet a layman he wrote (both for the heathen 
in defence of Christianity and on special matters of 
Christian interest) several of the most valuable of 
his numerous writings. One of those, known as 
" The Apology," presents with wonderful power the 
contrast between the Christian and pagan life and 
principles ; in this occurs the famous passage so often 
misquoted as " the blood of the martyrs is the seed 
of the Church." He says to the rulers of Rome, " Go 
on, zealous governors, sacrifice the Christians at the 
will of the people, kill us, torture us, condemn us, 
grind us to dust, your cruelty will not avail you ; the 
oftener we are mown down by you, the m.ore in 
number we grow ; the Blood of Christians is seed." 

It was inevitable, also, that the same temperament 
would demand from his fellow-Christians the most 
uncompromising and rigid following of what he 
thought to be the consistent life of the Christian. 

Unhappily, notwithstanding the dangers by which 
the Christians were constantly surrounded, many who 
were members of the Church winked at, or even 
shared in, acts which were unworthy of their profes- 
sion, and others (while not doing anything positively 
evil) were treading in paths which he felt would 
lead to sin. Not only was he sorely grieved at these 



74 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

inconsistencies, but at the same time a portion of 
the clergy assumed airs of pretension and superior- 
ity, and by their insolence or display aroused his 
personal indignation. In the one case as well as the 
other, we may readily believe that neither his 
tongue nor his pen was idle in reproving conduct 
which he thought to be so opposed to the lofty ideal 
which the Christian life required. 

While in this condition of mind he came in con- 
tact with a class of teachers recently come from 
Asia, known in Church history as Montanists, from 
the name of their chief — Montanus. The tenets of 
this system, or at least some of them, seemed to meet 
precisely the necessities of the position he occupied. 
Without going into the details of these, it is suffi- 
cient for our purposes to know that, as he under- 
stood or modified them, they maintained that the 
Church needed (after Christ) a special dispensation 
of the Holy Ghost as essential to its continuance 
and advance ; that certain persons (Montanus, their 
chief) were possessed of such light ; that it was by 
this Light the individual Christian must be con- 
stantly led in the directing of his own Christian life 
and conduct ; and that such persons must be regarded 
as actual organs of the Holy Ghost, who spake by 
them as his agents in the guidance of the Church. 
They held that the articles of essential faith had been 
established once for all, hence these could not be 
changed. But for the present needs of the Church 
and of its members, such personal utterances of the 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 75 

Divine Spirit were essentially necessary. How much 
of the real Montanism Tertullian accepted is not 
known, but he was supremely convinced of its cen- 
tral idea, which in its essence was very much the 
same as the Quakerism of George Fox — the vital ne- 
cessity of conscious personal relations to the Holy 
Spirit as above any mere external authority or ordi- 
nary Church legislation, for the correct understand- 
ing and direction of the Christian individual or the 
Church as a whole. 

Neither the opinions of Tertullian on such a mat- 
ter, nor his mode of presenting them were, as we may 
well believe, such as would be acceptable to the au- 
thorities of the Church, and (whether by his own act 
or that of the authorities is not important) he left 
the communion of the Church, though he still con- 
tinued the vigorous use of his pen and voice upon 
whatever question of Christian interest he felt him- 
self called to speak. Neither is it certain whether 
he remained apart from the Catholics or returned to 
their communion late in life, as he soon disappears 
from the view of history, and we know really noth- 
ing of his later years. 

But whichever was the case, it is quite certain that 
the Church as a whole has always ranked him among 
her most distinguished " Fathers ; " and notwithstand- 
ing his relations with the Montanist Schism, he has 
occupied a higher place and exercised a far wider 
influence as one of the great Leaders of Christian 
thought than most of those who have been officially 



76 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

recognized as saints and enrolled as Doctors of the 
Church. 

Turning now from the character and work of Ter- 
tullian, as a man and a Presbyter dealing with the 
personal life of the Christian, what do his writings 
afford directly or incidentally as " a basis for the re- 
union of Christendom ? " 

I must assume here, what has been fully treated 
in the preceding Lectures, that nothing should be 
deemed essential in a basis for Christian Union — at 
least intercommunion — that was not accepted and 
acted upon by the Church Catholic as fundamental 
in the belief or organization of the early centuries ; 
and conversely, that whatever of either faith or order 
was in these same centuries universally recognized 
and enforced as fundamental, cannot safely be dis- 
regarded in any basis for a reunion of Christendom 
in our day. 

On the great issues of the vital truths of the 
Creed, the Divineness and Authority of Holy Scrip- 
tures, the obligations and benefits of the two Sacra- 
ments, there was no question as to their Catholic 
authority then and, happily, none In their acceptance 
by wellnigh all societies which are called churches 
at the present time. 

But on one of the matters which have been 
largely the subject of controversy, much light 
emerges in connection with his discussions of the 
various heresies which were then disturbing the 
peace of the Church, this is the question of the 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 77 

" Historic Episcopate." Certain heretical teachers 
had set up a wholly new idea of Christ, one differing 
Avidely from that held by the Church ; they claimed 
that their conception was the true representation of 
the actual Christ, and was to be accepted instead of 
that which the Church maintained. Among «ther 
grounds on which they rested their new theories 
was the authority of Holy Scripture, and one of 
their most effective modes of argument was the 
quotation of certain passages from the Bible, mainly 
the New Testament ; these they interpreted by 
rules of their own making, and then applied them 
to the support of the opinions they sought to pro- 
mulgate. 

Tertullian entered very early, and with great 
vigor, into the contest with these Heretics — Gnos- 
tics, as they were called — but his line of argument 
was wholly different from theirs ; he believed in Holy 
Scripture as thoroughly as they, and quoted it as 
confidently ; but, since their method left each party 
to fix its own sense on every passage and on its 
meaning as a whole, there was no end to the discus- 
sion; it was a mere word-battling as to whose inter- 
pretation was the better ; there could be no positive 
ground for decision either way ; hence Tertullian 
brings in another witness, but one whose testimony 
could be very easily overthrown if open to denial, 
yet very decisive if in itself undeniable. It is virtu- 
ally : " Your doctrine is not scriptural, is not from 
or of the Apostles who wrote the Scriptures, be- 



78 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

cause in every great city, in every part of the Em- 
pire, there are at this time Bishops who can, each 
one of them (from the records, etc., of his Diocese), 
trace back his predecessors to the time of the Apos- 
tles, and the first of these in every line received his 
authority and his doctrine from the Apostles or 
their companions ; now, all these men, thus receiv- 
ing and handing down the Apostolic Truth {i.e., 
Bible Teaching), agree in the same great essentials 
of Doctrine, and no one of them ever, until your 
heresy, heard of your opinions or beliefs. Hence, as 
they have continued in unbroken succession from 
the beginning, to teach and hand down the truths 
they learned from the Apostles as well as the Scrip- 
tures written and authorized by the Apostles, and 
are now all in agreement as to the great Doctrines 
of the Bible and the Church, their teaching must be 
regarded as the true Doctrine of the Apostles and 
the Holy Word." 

The reply to this (If false) would have been very 
obvious, very easily applied, thoroughly crushing. 
All that would be needed was to assert, on evidence 
that could not have been difficult to find, " your 
statement is not true, your line of Bishops in this 
city began only fifty years ago, that in Jerusalem 
commenced with a man who never saw an Apostle ; 
or, if you can trace something back one hundred 
years, it had no authority, and here and there are 
scores of cities with many churches, and they have 
not, and never had, any such succession as your 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 79 

Bishops." The assertion of the existence of such a 
series of lines, their succession, their authority, was 
open to disproval by a cloud of witnesses over all 
the Church. 

And yet, with all the ability, the zeal, the acute- 
ness of the Heretics, we find no hint of any such en- 
deavor ; there is abundance of keen, subtle, often 
powerful, reasoning, but nowhere any effort to deny 
this potent evidence from history ; the facts then, as 
facts, may fairly be considered as beyond any seri- 
ous contradiction. But if accepted as facts, they 
draw with them at least one conclusion, i.e.^ that in 
the second century it was universally admitted, by 
Heretic and Orthodox alike, that Bishops each de- 
scended in a line beginning from the Apostles, ap- 
pointed and authorized directly or mediately by 
them, were an integral element of the organization 
of the Christian Church as left by the Apostles, and 
hence must be retained as fundamental in any pro- 
posal looking to the reunion of Christendom on an 
historical and apostolic basis. 

There is another point (in quite an opposite direc- 
tion) on which the testimony of Tertullian comes 
with effective weight ; this is, that the Church in the 
third century did not hold either the infallibility or 
supreme authority of the Bishop of Rome. He was, 
from the very position of his city, the chief Bishop 
of the West; the general belief that S. Peter and 
S. Paul were both martyred at Rome, had invested 
its church and head with high veneration, the sue- 



80 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

cession of its Bishops, although none of them had as 
yet made any contributions to the theology of the 
Church, had nevertheless been mostly composed of 
shrewd, wise, able men, and they had done a mighty 
work in organizing and unifying the Western Church. 
For all these reasons, the Roman Bishop had been 
regarded from an early date as the Patriarch of the 
West, and also as being in an especial sense the suc- 
cessor there of S. Peter. On the other hand, a See 
recognized as entitled to so distinguished a position, 
would be under constant temptation to add to its 
distinction and importance, by ever-increasing claims 
of superiority, and, whenever it seemed possible, to 
introduce and enforce its own authority and jurisdic- 
tion in other portions of the Church. Such was the 
course of Rome, but the North African Church 
never, in any period of its existence as a separate 
church, admitted the exercise of any such authority 
or rule ; on the contrary, its leaders were always 
prompt (when they thought the occasion called 
for it) to repudiate the assumption of the Roman 
Bishop, to charge and to reprove his errors whether 
of belief or conduct, to treat him indeed as a distin- 
guished fellow-Bishop, whom they were ready to 
honor because of his high station, but (as S. Paul 
said to the followers of Peter in Galatia) " to whom 
they gave place by subjection — no, not for an hour " 
(Gal. 2, 5). 

In a certain matter on which Tertullian felt very 
deeply, the Bishop of Rome had declared that ab- 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 8 1 

solution should be given for certain sins for which 
Tertullian thought it ought not to be allowed ; hence 
in a tract discoursing of the subject, the fiery North 
African condemns both the opinion and expression 
of the Roman Bishop with indignant sarcasm, *' I 
hear there has been an edict set forth ; the Su- 
preme Pontifex " — (the very term was contemptuous, 
very much as we now say " the Great Mogul," as the 
title was at this time, and for two centuries after, 
exclusively appropriated to the Roman Emperor, 
hence was applied here to the Roman Bishop only 
in derision) — " The Supreme Pontifex the Bishop 
of Rome issues an edict.; O Edict, on which cannot 
be inscribed * good deed,' Far, far from Christ's 
betrothed (the Church) be such proclamation ; 
She does not make it ; if because the Lord said to 
Peter, * to Thee I have given the key,' etc., etc., 
you presume that this power has derived to you, 
what sort of a man are you, subverting and chang- 
ing the manifest intention of the Lord, which con- 
ferred this gift personally on Peter ? " And he goes 
on to show how it was fulfilled in the life and person 
of Peter himself, but that it conveyed no such power 
to his successors in the Episcopate, and most as- 
suredly none to the Bishop of Rome upon any 
ground whatever. 

If this opinion of Tertullian stood alone in the 

history of the African Church, it might be regarded 

as only the utterance of an individual who thus 

felt ; but it becomes an invaluable testimony that 

6 



82 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

submission to, or recognition of, the authority of 
Rome was not an accepted doctrine of the early- 
ages, when we find, as will be shown later on, that 
it was likewise repudiated both by individuals and 
councils of the North Africans, continuously, for 
more than two hundred years from the time of Ter- 
tuUian. 

Accordingly, as not being a part of either the doc- 
trine or the practice of the Primitive Church, it can- 
not enter into a basis for the reunion of Christendom 
to-day. 

While Tertullian was in the height of his fame and 
his labors (about A.D. 200), was born, probably in or 
near Carthage, Thascius Cyprian, the second of the 
splendid trio of North African teachers. 

He was also, like Tertullian, trained in all the learn- 
ing and culture of the educated Roman of his time. 
He was an orator by profession, and a teacher of 
rhetoric. His wealth was ample, he lived in ele- 
gance, and enjoyed through all his life the compan- 
ionship of the men of the highest rank in Roman 
society and in the state. 

He was not converted until well on in middle life, 
somewhere between forty and forty-five. He had 
been so highly esteemed by all the people of Car- 
thage, while yet a heathen, that very soon after his 
baptism (and not in literal accordance with the 
canons) he was called — almost compelled — by the 
Christians in Carthage to be made priest, and almost 
immediately after was consecrated as their Bishop. 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 83 

This rapid elevation to the Episcopate seemed at the 
time to be, and perhaps (in the then condition of 
that Church) was, fully justifiable and right ; but it 
was not so regarded by all the clergy of the province, 
and it originated a faction hostile to Cyprian, which 
remained an unceasing source of annoyance and hin- 
drance to him through all his after-life. In the main 
outlines of his theology he was largely influenced by 
Tertullian. He may well have heard his great fel- 
low-countryman preach, he was thoroughly familiar 
with all his writings, and was constantly accustomed 
to call him his master and teacher (Magister). 

But, as a Bishop of so prominent a city as Carth- 
age he was called, from the stormy and terrible con- 
dition of his age and of the Church, to deal chiefly 
with urgent and perilous public questions involving 
the interests of the Church as a whole. A distin- 
guished French writer^ says of him : " Around him 
turns the whole Catholic organization of his age ; he 
is its director and master ; " he directs " how best to 
encourage the feeble, to moderate the violent, to call 
back the apostates, to quiet the people, to maintain 
due obedience ; what a wonderful union of heroic 
faith and assiduous prudence could alone guide 
aright that grand work, which at the same time em- 
braced life and death, this world and eternity ; he 
was a great administrator and a statesman of the 
very highest order.'' 

* Chasles : litudes sur les premiers temps du Christianis- 
me, etc. 



84 TFIE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

The persecutions in North Africa, which seem to 
have relaxed for some years after Tertullian's death, 
broke out with new fury soon after the accession of 
Cyprian to the Episcopate. And they brought with 
them numerous complications the most puzzling and 
difficult, both in the personal relations of Cyprian 
and in his official action as Bishop. 

When this storm first fell upon Carthage, Cyprian 
thought it best for his work and the Church that he 
should withdraw for a time from the city and live 
in retirement. Undoubtedly this was then the wise, 
right course to take (as the result fully justified). 
Although removed from immediate danger, he still 
directed with consummate judgment, ability, and tact 
all the affairs of his diocese, and discussed with recog- 
nized wisdom many of the vital and yet perplexing 
problems which the New Life of the Church was 
every day called on to meet in other portions of the 
Christian world. 

After about fourteen months the Bishop returned 
to Carthage, but it was only to find yet more trou- 
blesome issues forced upon him while the difficul- 
ties of his position were greatly increased by the 
malignant strictures on his fleeing from martyrdom, 
made by the faction opposed to him. 

One of the most puzzling of these issues (espe- 
cially under his circumstances) arose from the ex- 
cessive veneration of the Christians for those who 
had suffered in the persecution, i.e., Christians who 
were waiting in prison in the expectation of death, 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 85 

or who were at the time actually suffering from tor- 
ture, starvation, or wasting decay as slaves in the 
metal mines. 

It was felt by all hearts that these were sacrificed 
heroes of the faith, and they were regarded by the 
Christian community with a reverence and devotion 
almost without limit. It is a cold heart indeed 
that (even after so many centuries) can read with 
undimmed eye the piteous stories of their suffer- 
ings and their bravery. One of their number (con- 
fessors, as they were called) writes to another the 
fate of a few of their common acquaintance. It is a 
bare catalogue for brevity, and yet opens a vista of 
unspeakable horrors. " Bassus is in the metal mines. 
Mappalicus under torture. Fortunio in the dun- 
geon. Paulus has been tortured. Victor, Julia (and 
several others) were put to death in prison by hun- 
ger. In a few days you will hear that I have died 
the same." And in reply the friend to whom he 
writes, tells him of" the brave Saturninus, who would 
not abjure Christ even when they tore him with 
pincers of iron." We cannot wonder that the fellow- 
Christians of men and heroic women such as these 
should have rendered them a love hardly short of 
adoration. 

On the other hand, it is a strange (though perhaps 
natural) exhibition of human nature, that many of 
these confessors so sublime in endurance, so unmoved 
before death, were yet so elated and puffed up with 
the reverence and adulation given them, that they 



86 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

came to deem themselves superior to all the order, 
discipline, and law of the Church ; and to believe 
that they possessed supreme power to arrest its 
penalty on anyone who was under discipline, or to 
restore to full membership by their word whatever 
apostate or other offender would come to them for 
absolution. To all such they gave a certificate or 
little book, which demanded of the Bishop that he 
should at once reinstate its bearer and accept as final 
the absolution of the confessors. 

It needs no explanation to show the innumerable, 
disastrous evils which must result from such an utter 
destruction of all the safeguards and barriers both of 
morals and government. And yet so blind was the 
devotion of the mass of the people to the Holy Con- 
fessors, that only a man of Cyprian's consummate 
ability could have guided the Church safely through 
such a perilous strait. 

I cannot pause here to give even an outline of the 
long and bitter struggle that grew out of this, nor of 
the wise judgment which shaped the course of Cyp- 
rian. Suffice it to say that he settled the principle 
for all after-time, " that the Church must be governed 
and discipline ministered by the legal authority and 
according to law, not on the personal impulses of 
even the most holy, or the independent action of 
even the most meritorious." 

There were other questions in which he was in- 
terested, which have more definite bearing on the 
basis for the reunion of Christendom. 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 8/ 

The first was, whether baptism performed by 
others than ministers of the Orthodox Catholic 
Church was valid — or ought to be repeated ? Cyp- 
rian zealously contended that such baptisms had 
no value, were in fact not Christian baptism at all ; 
hence all who came into the Church having this only, 
must be re-baptized, or rather then first receive true 
baptism. But in this he, and those influenced by 
him, were opposed to almost all the rest of the 
Church, and to the ancient usage and tradition of 
the greater portion of the Church, which had always 
held that " a baptism with water, with Christ's ap- 
pointed formula * In the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' was a true bap- 
tism and ought not to be repeated." His opposition 
to this did not prevail, and the Church has always 
held that such baptisms were valid, and all such per- 
sons are baptized. Hence this need not stand in 
the way of a reunion. And the Church can cor- 
dially recognize all who have been thus baptized as 
true members of the body of Christ ; that is, as be- 
ing already members of the Catholic Church, and 
needing only to be restored to the communion of her 
apostolic form. 

The second question above referred to was his re- 
lation as Bishop to the Bishop of Rome. 

In the discussion of baptism, as on several other 
questions, he had differed very widely from the 
Bishop who at the time occupied the See of Rome. 
Upon certain of these questions the Roman Bishop 



88 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

had spoken in a tone which savored, in the opinion 
of Cyprian, too much of authority; in response, 
upon more than one occasion, the Bishop of Carth- 
age not only " differs from his dear brother of Rome " 
(whom he also addresses as " his colleague ") in most 
emphatic language, but even declares him wholly in 
error; and while reproving, as he terms it, "the 
bitter obstinacy of our Brother Stephen," he rather 
wonders " whether an account can be satisfactorily 
rendered in the day of Judgment for a priest who 
maintains the opinion, which his dear brother had 
announced and approved." 

He willingly admits, as did all the Western Church, 
the primacy and honor of the Bishop of Rome (he 
was not known as The Pope for some three or more 
centuries after this), but he adds, immediately after 
asserting this, that the rest of the apostles were also 
(the same as Peter) endowed with a like partnership 
both of honor and power. Nor did Cyprian and 
North Africa stand alone in the expression of like 
views in this same period ; among the correspond- 
ents of Cyprian was a Bishop of Asia, one Firmilian, 
who says in reference to the course of the Roman 
Bishop : " Those who are at Rome vainly pretend the 
authority of the Apostles" in the claims they make 
for their decisions on points of doctrine. " Stephen 
(Bishop of Rome) has dared to depart from the 
peace and unity of the Church," "and he has re- 
belled against the sacrament and the faith with con- 
tumacious discord." 



AxWD ITS TEACHERS. 89 

It needs no argument to show that, with such 
opinions and expressions as these, neither the infal- 
libility nor the supremacy of the Roman Bishop 
could have been regarded in that age as an essential 
of either belief or practice in the Catholic Church, 
and hence cannot be required as conditions in any 
basis of reunion now. 

In the third of the subjects mentioned, Cyprian 
gives what he really did hold as the Apostolic 
Catholic teaching on the constitution and order of 
the Church. He seems to have formed his opin- 
ions on this very early in his ministry ; but these 
were first given in their completed form in the im- 
mortal treatise entitled on " The Unity of the 
Church," and read as a sort of charge to a council 
at Carthage after his return from his exile during 
the first persecution. Here, as elsewhere, he main- 
tains that the unity of the Church was symbolized 
in Peter; but, as before stated, in conjunction with 
this he also declares that a partnership in power 
and honor was also given to all the apostles, and 
that the principle of this unity was that " The whole 
episcopate is one undivided body, of which each 
Bishop holds a part (as a member) for the whole." 
" The Bishop is in the Church and the Church 
in the Bishop ; " hence no Bishop is or can be, as 
Bishop, supreme over any other. In connection 
with this he, again and again, asserts that each 
Bishop is and must be independent in his own 
jurisdiction; accordingly he tells his dear brother in 



90 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

Rome, " Each prelate has in the administration of 
his own church the exercise of his free will, as he 
shall give account to God ; " and elsewhere he 
writes, " Every Bishop disposes and directs his own 
acts," etc. 

The independence, however, thus maintained by 
Cyprian did not mean that each Bishop was wholly 
irresponsible to the Church for what he taught, and 
in the conduct of the Diocese. His own expression 
of the need of unity and his personal action unite to 
show that he had an entirely different intention ; the 
Bishops were free from subserviency one to another, 
or to anyone Bishop as supreme over all the others. 
But as a corporate unity, a whole of which each 
held an equal part with all the others, and for the 
good of all, they were all responsible to the control 
of the organic whole ; and this was effected (follow- 
ing the examples of the apostles at Jerusalem) by 
the council or synod of the province, or of the whole 
church, by which that whole was represented and 
through which it acted. 

It was not yet the time for the great General 
Councils ; Nice was not convened till nearly seventy 
years after Cyprian ; but from the beginning of his 
Episcopate he had recognized the full significance 
of the council, and so constantly had he called his 
brethren of North Africa together for decision and 
co-operation, that the use of the Council was vir- 
tually established on its proper basis by his admin- 
istration. Councils had a,hyays been an essential 



AND ITS TEACHERS, 9 1 

element in the working of the Church, but he first 
developed their full effectiveness and influence ; and 
when the Universal Councils came, the Church had 
already learned (mainly from Cyprian) to recognize 
in them the right and sufficient means whereby the 
Bishops, in their several jurisdictions, were enabled 
to be as they should be, independent one of an- 
other, and yet the unity of the Church, as one di- 
vine whole, be maintained by the Council, the com- 
mon voice of all. 

An universal episcopacy handed down from the 
Apostles, in which each Bishop has an independent 
authority, but under responsibility to God, and the 
voice of the Church as an organic whole expressed 
through its councils, was undoubtedly the belief of 
Cyprian and the entire Church Catholic of his age. 
As such it would need very strong opposing testi- 
mony to reject this from the principles that were 
deemed fundamental in the organization of the 
Apostolic Church. 

Although Cyprian had avoided the first persecu- 
tion, yet the time came at length when he himself 
felt that the sacrifice now asked of him was to give 
his life for the Church. Another persecution was 
ordered, especially of the Bishops and chief leaders 
of the Christians. For a while Cyprian was only 
banished by the government from Carthage, but 
after a time the Emperor ordered him to be seized 
and publicly slain. The officer sent to arrest the 
Bishop, when he goes to fulfil his orders, asks him : 



92 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

" Art thou Thascius Cyprian ? " '* I am." " Do you. 
call yourself the father and guide of these sacrileg- 
ious Christians ? " "I do." " The sacred emperor 
commands you to sacrifice." " I cannot." " Think 
what you are doing." " Perform that which is ap- 
pointed you ; my resolution is right, I have no need 
to think." After this simple, yet grand confession, 
and in a public square of Carthage, before a vast 
concourse of people, the trembling executioner, far 
more terrified than his victim, severed his head from 
his body. The man Cyprian was dead. But the 
wise teacher, the far-seeing leader, the spirit that 
could endure scorn when it was needful and meet 
death when that was the better, is still living and 
speaking, and can never die. 

Cyprian was martyred in 258. Wellnigh one 
hundred years passed by, and in 354 A.D., Aurelius 
Augustine, the third and greatest of the distin- 
guished North African teachers of the Church was 
born; and perhaps no theologian has had a wider 
influence on the thinking of the Christian world — 
certainly not of the Latin-speaking portion of the 
Church — than Augustine. 

Like his predecessors he was born in North Africa, 
and like them, too, was a trained and accomplished 
rhetorician. His mother, Monnica, was a fervid, 
prayerful Christian, but his father seems to have 
been a coarse, licentious man, and the youth and 
early manhood of Augustine were given largely to 
passionate indulgence and dissipation ; with all his 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 93 

excesses he was at the same time an omnivorous 
student, and soon manifested his earnestness by giv- 
ing himself with sincere devotion to such of the 
schools of thought with which he came in contact, as 
appeared to promise satisfaction to his eager crav- 
ings. 

The first of these was the heresy of the Mani- 
chees, the system partly Christian and partly Zoro- 
astrian of an able Persian, Mani, from whom it took 
its name ; this claimed to have solved the deep mys- 
tery of the origin of evil and the need of the work 
of Christ, by asserting the existence and activity of 
two equally eternal, ever contending beings, God 
and Satan, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, 
Spirit and Matter; the good, the light, the spiritual, 
sought to draw all spiritual life away from the ma- 
terial and unite it with itself; the evil one, matter, 
nature, sin, holds man in the bonds of his fleshy 
nature and keeps him from the good ; and Christ 
was the means by whom the release of man could 
alone be effected; but in himself, and in these 
means, the Jesus of the Manichees was wholly alien 
to the Christ of the Gospels. 

Of course, the belief in such a system as this, false 
and imperfect though it was, must have won Augus- 
tine more or less from his sensual courses ; but after 
remaining some nine years in connection with this 
body it failed to realize for him the lofty ideal he 
had sought, and he abandoned it. 

About this time the writings of the new Platon- 



94 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

ists (known as the Alexandrian Philosophy), the 
wonderful treatises of Plotinus, and the works of 
Plato himself, attracted his attention. He could not 
study these in their original Greek, his knowledge 
of that language, as of the Hebrew, being very scant, 
but there seems to have been ample translations of 
them into Latin, and he refers to them continually, 
and in places quotes largely from their veiy text. 

The study of the Platonists afforded him, indeed, 
the sublimity and philosophic depth which he had 
failed to find among the Manichees, and his own 
thought was greatly moulded in many of its most 
important features by his Alexandrian teachers. 
But much as he admired them and used their writ- 
ings, they also lacked the adaptation to his spiritual 
needs which his soul had craved, and which his in- 
ternal struggles now demanded as a necessity, if he 
were ever to have any true spiritual life. 

While in this searching, baffled state, he came 
under the influence of Ambrose, the illustrious 
Bishop and preacher of Milan. Through the ser- 
mons and personal intercourse of this remarkable 
man, the interest in Christianity which had been 
deadened in Augustine since he left his mother's 
side was re-awakened, and after a considerable time 
of careful thought and study, he found in the Word 
of God, in Christ, all that he had sought so long 
and vainly elsewhere. About the age of thirty- 
three he avowed himself a Christian and was bap- 
tized. Four years later (391) he was made a Pres- 



AND ITS TEACHERS, 95 

byter in North Africa, and four years after this, in 
395, about the age of forty-one, he was chosen As- 
sistant or Coadjutor Bishop of the diocese and city 
of Hippo, a considerable town on the border of the 
sea, about sixty miles west from Carthage and soon 
became, by the death of its aged Bishop, the sole 
Diocesan of Hippo. 

In the one hundred and fifty years nearly, as it 
now was, since the death of Cyprian, the world had 
undergone one of the most stupendous revolutions 
in human history. 

The old Roman-Greek world, with all its relig- 
ions, its philosophies, its modes of life, had died. 
All the elements that were (twelve centuries later) 
to constitute modern civilization and modern Eu- 
rope were in full operation, although as yet unde- 
veloped and unrecognized in their true import. 

The Emperor Constantine had struck the death- 
knell of the ancient world, when, in A.D. 313, he had 
proclaimed himself the friend and protector of the 
Christian Church. By summoning, in A.D. 325, the 
great Christian Synod or Council of Nice, and ac- 
cepting its deliverances as authority, he had placed 
beside the Imperial throne a power that in the 
coming centuries would exercise a dominion wider, 
more imperious than any emperor of all the Caesars' 
had ever dared to dream ; by removing, as he did 
in A.D. 330, his court and capital away from old 
Rome, once called The Eternal City, to his new 
oriental seat, Constantinople, he had actually, though 



96 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

he knew it not, sealed the final doom of the Roman 
Empire in the West, and transferred the power of 
the Empire and the Caesars to the barbarian Goths 
and the Papal hierarchy. 

The history of the world from this time on is lit- 
tle more than on one hand the tedious, and often 
painful, record of the lingering decay of paganism 
and all the ancient life that had gathered around it, 
and on the other of the desolations wrought by the 
barbarians, and the extension of the power and in- 
fluence of the Church, until it finally becomes the 
master of the very destroyers by whom at times its 
own existence had seemed to be imperilled. 

In the same year (a.d. 395) in which Augustine 
was made Bishop, the. Emperor Theodosius died, the 
last of the emperors who saw the Roman Empire 
undivided and in anything like its ancient glory. 
It was partitioned on his death between his two 
equally worthless sons, and in eighty years more the 
Western portion of it was wiped off the page of his- 
tory, and its remains parted among the invading 
tribes who were rolling over it, tide after tide of de- 
stroying Goths, Vandals, Huns, Saxons, Franks, and 
a score of other consuming swarms from the fields 
and forests of the ferocious North. 

With the decay of the old time religions and be- 
liefs, which was now very universal and complete, 
the old virtues, and among these a spirit of man- 
liness and bravery which belonged anciently to them, 
had also disappeared. With the everywhere pre- 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 97 

vailing corruption and luxury had come, as they 
always will, selfish, ease-seeking effeminacy, cow- 
ardice, and all the degrading, meaner vices which 
ever accompany an era of infidel and dissolute so- 
ciety. 

Unhappily, too, since Christianity had become 
the official religion of the Emperors and the Em- 
pire, thousands had crowded into the Church with- 
out any real change of character, or any actual 
amendment in either their principles or life, and 
consequently they brought with them much of 
the spirit of effeminacy and self-indulgence which 
so disgraced the Roman paganism of that age. 
Hence the curious fact that the great Christian 
writers of this period, although expressing on the 
one hand their anguish at the desolations of the 
barbarians, yet, on the other, seem often to look 
upon the invaders, with all their brutality, more 
favorably than upon either the degenerate Roman 
or the false-hearted betrayers of the Christian faith. 
Thus a Christian writer of the times says : " We of 
the empire have no more victories, no more riches, 
no more peace; we know to increase nothing but 
our vices. The old Romans terrified the world, 
and ourselves are the terrified to-day. If we are alive 
at all, it is only because they think it better we 
should live and pay them for the wretched privi- 
lege. O, shame, shame ! Who is more abject, who 
can be more vile than we ? " Then turning in his 
wretchedness to the yet deeper misery of the Church 



98 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

defiled by its own members, he cries out : " Come, 
Saxons, come, Huns; come see these Christians; 
they read the Gospel, and live in debauchery ; they 
listen to the apostles, and grovel in drunkenness ; 
they claim to follow Christ, and yet are robbers." ^ 

The culmination of this " Agony of the Empire " 
seemed to be reached when, in A.D. 410, the city 
of Rome itself was taken by the half-barbarous, half- 
heretic Alaric, and given up to his ungoverned hosts 
for days to sack and kill and plunder. Jerome 
(who noted the course of the desolation from his 
far-off cave in Bethlehem) had written : " The Bar- 
barians as a deluge have devoured Egypt, Phoenicia, 
Syria ; the whole Orient trembles ; the Caucasus 
vomits swarms of destroying Huns, they delight in 
slaughter;" but when he hears of the destruction 
of Rome, the end of all things seems now to have 
come, and he cries out in his misery, " Since Rome 
has perished, what else can be saved ? " He sees 
only one thing that can endure, and he believes this 
wholly because he believes in Christ's promise. 
" The Roman world has passed away, the Chris- 
tians, the Christians only are left standing. It is 
our neck only that is not bent to the earth " in utter 
hopeless ruin. 

It was at such a time, and amid scenes such as 
these, that all the later and Christian years of 
Augustine's life were spent. Jerome was right and 
Ausfustine felt with him, and was himself to be one 



'& 



Chasles, ut supra, quoting Sidonius Apollinaris, p. 103. 



AND ITS TEACHERS, 99 

of the mightiest agents in aiding the Church to 
accomplish the tremendous work that she was now 
set to perform, the work of building a new world, 
a world of higher hopes, nobler possibilities, grander 
results than the history of man had ever before im- 
agined. 

To him was given a task wholly different from 
that of his great predecessors, Cyprian and Tertul- 
lian. Their work had been, from the conditions of 
their time, to contend for and to establish certain 
special principles or restrictions connected with the 
practical working of Christianity and the Church ; 
his task was to present, in the language known to 
thinking m.en all over the Western world, and in 
forms adapted to their type of mind, all that was 
essential in the theology of the Church, and all that 
was proven wisest in its practical application to life 
and conduct. 

He was, in fact, the creator of Western theology, 
and remains to-day, more than any other one man, 
the exponent of many of its chief lines of thought, 
the source whence all the great divisions of the 
Western Church, even those which seem most di- 
verse, have drawn a large part of the principles 
which they deem fundamental. 

This very character of his work, in connection 
with his wide range of subjects and his variety of 
treatment, will of course render it impossible to at- 
tempt here any detail of the manifold, many-sided 
labors of Augustine. 



100 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

His chief importance in Church history, indeed 
in the history of the world, was that in this time of 
mental chaos, upheaval of ancient beliefs, annihila- 
tion of old philosophies, and the reconstruction of 
the world on new principles and with new aims, he 
presented Christianity to the Western mind in such 
form and under such conditions as could fill the 
place left vacant in men's thoughts by the oblitera- 
tion of the old systems, while at the same time he 
announced the truths on which and by which the 
new order of things could be created and maintained. 

Just at the period when the ancient guides of 
men had failed them, he gave to the thinkers of the 
West a coherent, elevating system of religion and of 
life ; one which contained vital truths for the pres- 
ent world and rich hopes for the future life of man, 
and which, in its divine origin and essential truth, 
vastly more than compensated for the jarring un- 
certainties which perplexed them in the latter 
periods of their old pagan superstitions and half- 
beliefs. 

He could not have known — no man could have 
imagined — the wonderful revolution that was to 
take place ; but that his mind with a divine instinct 
felt the essential principles involved in it, is evident 
from the title and subject of his greatest single 
work, one to which he gave more than ten years of 
the ripest maturity of his genius and learning, " The 
City of God." In this he places in contrast two 
world powers in necessary and continual antago- 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 10 i 

nism and hostility : one is the world of sin, repre- 
sented by the old pagan city, heathen Rome — this 
he shows to be false, unsatisfying, doomed to de- 
struction temporal and eternal ; the other is the 
divine work and dominion of Christ, the Heavenly 
City, here the Church militant holding and minis- 
tering truth, warring against sin and evil, hereafter 
the Church triumphant and glorying with Christ 
forever. Hence, as the City of God it is the ever 
conquering, enlarging kingdom of Christ upon the 
earth, and the home and heaven of His elect 
throughout eternity. 

The conception was in itself sublime and his 
execution of the great idea stands, and will always 
stand, as one, perhaps even the noblest, of the pre- 
sentations of the whole scope of the Gospel which 
the Church in all her ages has produced. 

His several personal controversies, however im- 
portant they may have seemed at the time, are of 
comparatively small moment compared with his 
general influence as having given unity and com- 
pleteness to the whole trend and expression of the 
thought of the Western Church, first directly on the 
times in which he lived, and then continuously, 
through other channels, dov/n even to our own age 
with all its baffling theologies. And now, as in 
the former centuries, his thoughts enter as an impor- 
tant factor on one side or other of wellnigh every 
discussion on. religious matters of any moment oa 
which the minds of men are exercised. 



I02 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

The chief of his individual polemics were those 
against a schism which had revived a former con- 
tention, and which repudiated the sacraments of all 
ministers who were not personally holy men. It 
was known in the time of Augustine as Donatism, 
from the name Donatus, one of its African leaders. 
The other, which has more present interest in con- 
nection with certain lines of thought in our own 
time, was Pelagianism. This was originated by a 
monk of Britain known as Pelagius, who assigned so 
independent a power to the individual will of man 
that there was no real necessity in his salvation for 
any especial supernatural grace of God. God had 
prepared the means, and man's natural will; aided by 
the ordinary operations of the Divine, and working 
in accord with them, could do all the rest. 

Augustine's own early struggles and failures had 
made him deeply conscious that man, of himself, was 
not able to elevate himself. This led him to a 
fierce assault on what he thought to be the unsafe 
and dangerous repudiation of Divine Grace by the 
less experienced Briton ; while in another phase 
of his character, that profound sense of the omnipo- 
tence and supreme government of God which 
marked all his Christian life, constrained him to 
make God virtually all and in all for whatever man 
needed to be and to do that was right. 

In both these polemics his essential principle was 
true and has been so recognized by the Church in 
all ages ; but in both also his zeal, and what he 



AND ITS TEACHERS. IO3 

thought his logic, led him to positions which have 
pioneered others into very lamentable errors. 

From his desire to see the unity of the Church in 
Africa restored during the Donatist schism, he so 
far forgot the principles of the Gospel as he taught 
them elsewhere, as to urge the Emperor and civil 
authorities to stamp out the Donatists, who refused 
submission to the Church, by the hard hand of 
legal enactment and compulsion. Not only this, 
but he supports his demand, upon several occa- 
sions, by urging as a scriptural ground for it the 
parable of our Lord in which the servants of the 
Master are bidden " to go out and compel them to 
come in ; " still more unaccountably, if possible, he 
urges that the example of Christ, who " cast Paul 
to the earth with his power," was a proof that rulers 
should first " compel " their unbelieving subjects to 
conform to the Faith and then console them with 
the Gospel. It needs only reference to the past 
history of the Church to learn what frightful evils 
came in after-days from the application of this un- 
christlike teaching in the conduct of His Church. 
In all fairness to so good and loving a man as 
Augustine surely was, we must believe that, had he 
known such evils would have followed from these 
opinions he never could have given them the sanc- 
tion of his mighty name. 

Another class of errors grew out of his over-strained 
position on the Divine omnipotence. He endeav- 
ored indeed to avoid the extremes to which his 



104 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

views upon this matter were liable, but in the strict 
logic of what he did hold, man was little more than 
a machine; the arbitrary sole will of God was 
substantially the only power, and these same prin- 
ciples, under the inexorable development of others 
who were not restrained by his large-hearted hu- 
manism, were made to conclude in the frightful doc- 
trine *' that God created a certain number of men 
for the express purpose of damning them ; " or, in a 
somewhat milder form, though with no logical differ- 
ence in sense, " By the decree of God, some men are 
predestined unto everlasting life, and others pre-or- 
dained to everlasting death." 

It may seem ungracious to refer to these mistakes 
or errors of so great a man, and one to whom the 
Church is so supremely indebted ; but it is only by 
showing men as they really are that we can either 
write history correctly, or feel it can be read with 
profit. 

When now we ask what did Augustine contrib- 
ute that will help us in settling " a basis for Chris- 
tian Reunion," we find that, first, he accepted as un- 
questionable verities all of the important princi- 
ples which were presented as settled in our study 
of Tertullian and Cyprian. The apostolic institu- 
tion of the Episcopate, the Divine authority of 
the Scriptures, the Diocesan independence of the 
Bishops, with the organic unity of the Church as a 
whole, and the denial of any necessity of re-baptism 
of those who have once been baptized with water 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 10$ 

and the formula appointed by our Lord. All these 
are dealt with by Augustine as matters which every- 
one accepts, and which are integral parts of his very 
conception of the Catholic Church. Besides the 
principles thus settled in the time of Augustine, 
there was another issue which has since taken a 
course wholly unlike that which it presented in 
these early ages, that is the claim of supremacy by 
the Bishop of Rome. The Bishop of Rome had, it 
is true, from time to time asserted, as we saw with 
Tertullian and Cyprian, that his opinions and judg- 
ments should have an especial weight and impor- 
tance attached to them in certain cases by other 
portions of the Church. Sometimes these claims 
were in a general way admitted, often simply ig- 
nored, and not infrequently were in distinct terms 
repudiated and repelled. 

This latter had been the course almost uniformly 
with the Church in North Africa. But a case oc- 
curred during the Episcopate of Augustine, where 
the issue was sharply made and the position of the 
African Church on its old ground, as shown by Ter- 
tullian and Cyprian, most emphatically reasserted 
and maintained. 

In the year 418 a recalcitrant African priest, one 
Apiarius, being excommunicated by his Bishop, goes 
to Rome and seeks the favor of its Bishop Zosimus. 
He orders his Diocesan to restore him.^ The Bishop 

' Hefele's History of the Councils, English translation, 
vol. ii., pp. 461-481. 



I06 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

and Clergy of North Africa were bitterly'indlgnant 
at this interference, as one of their canons prohib- 
ited any such appeal beyond the sea ; the Roman 
Bishop sent a messenger to Carthage to repeat his 
demand, and he bases this demand upon the ground 
that it was due to him by a canon of the first and 
revered synod of Nice. The Africans reply that 
they had never heard of such Nicene canon, and 
that it was utterly opposed to their own law and 
usage ; but, as the authority of the Nicene Council 
was supreme by the consent of all the Church, they 
agreed to send a deputation to Constantinople, 
Alexandria, and Antioch to obtain authenticated 
copies from the originals in these cities, in the mean- 
while allowing the nominal restoration of Apiarius 
until the exact words of the canon of Nice should 
be ascertained ; at the same time, they declared 
they would obey this if it were such as Zosimus had 
affirmed, but if it were not they would permit no 
such authority in the Bishop of Rome. After sev- 
eral conferences, and many angry passages, between 
the Roman messenger and the African Bishops, the 
commissioners to the East returned to Carthage and 
made their report, which was acted on promptly and 
decisively by a synod of the North African Bishops, 
in 424. This council declared that no such canon 
was to be found in any of the originals of the Synod 
of Nice, hence that no such authority of the Bishop 
of Rome had been acknowledged by that holy 
council ; and also that the course of the Bishop of 



AND ITS TEACHERS. 10/ 

Rome in receiving appeals from Africa was an at- 
tack ^ on the liberties of the African Church; and ac- 
cordingly they begged, in respectful but very em- 
phatic language, that he would rid them as soon 
as possible from the insolence of the messenger 
whom he had so long kept in Carthage, and would 
send no more men thereafter to interfere in their 
affairs. 

The above narrative has been taken in all its es- 
sentials from the great work of the Roman Bishop 
Hefele on the Councils ; and the only serious expla- 
nation he attempts is, that the Roman Bishop did 
not know what the Nicene canons really were, and 
had unwittingly mistaken one passed at Sardica for 
an act of the first and greatest of all the Christian 
councils. But, unfortunately, this does not help 
the claim of the Pope, as the power he had claimed 
is no more acknowledged in the Sardican canon 
than in any of Nice; and its value as an excuse for 
the Bishop of Rome is still further impaired by the 
fact that the successors of Zosimus, even after this 
crushing exposure, still continued for a considerable 
period to quote the Sardican canon as actually a 
decree of Nice.^ 

There is no doubt but Augustine attended some 
or all of these councils, and as he nowhere ex- 
presses any opinion inconsistent with their action, 
we may safely assume that he held on this matter 

' Hefele, vol. ii., p. 480. 

^ Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol. iv., p. 1224. 



I08 THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH 

the same judgment which had been pronounced by 
his predecessors, incorporated into the legislation of 
the African Church, and announced v/ith such un- 
mistakable clearness and vigor by the Carthaginian 
Council of 424, A.D. 

Hence, we are entitled to conclude that the action 
of the North African Church as continued through 
all the time we know its history, and approved by 
all its distinguished teachers, gives no reason to re- 
gard submission to the Pope, much less a belief of 
his infallibility, as rightly part of any basis for the 
reunion of Christendom. On the contrary, all we 
learn from its history or hear from its great masters 
shows that no such claim was admitted by the 
African Church, but, on still stronger grounds, 
would have been utterly repudiated as an essential 
element of primitive inter-communion. 

With S. Augustine ended, not only the brilliant 
succession of North African teachers, but virtually 
the North African Church and the African Prov- 
inces as distinct nationalities. 

While Augustine was dying, in 430, the Vandal 
hordes of Genseric were besieging his city. Hippo, 
and ravaging to utter desolation all the country 
around it. The sound of the yells of the Barbarians 
may have mingled with the prayers and hymns 
which went up from his chamber of death. His 
eyes may have seen night after night the horizon 
flaming with the fires of the burning towns of his 
miserable people ; and hardly were his funeral rites 



AND ITS TEACHERS. IO9 

fairly over before the entire population of Hippo 
who had escaped death, abandoned their city a prey 
to the invaders, and in poverty and hopeless exile 
sought refuge in Italy. Carthage, too, five hundred 
and eighty-five years after its final conquest by 
Rome, became the spoil of the Northern Barbar- 
ians. And North Africa ceases henceforth to have 
any marked place, or play any notable part, in either 
the history of the old world or the work of the 
Church in the new. 

With the death of Augustine closes in fact the 
period of the settlement and formulation of the fun- 
damental principles of the Constitution, Faith, and 
Worship of the Church. In the ages that followed 
him some of these came to be perverted, some 
frightfully misapplied, but none that were funda- 
mental were permanently destroyed. 

In the course of centuries, the excess of a reaction 
against these errors and perversions has led some 
portions of Christendom to a neglect, and others 
even to a rejection, of certain of the Apostolic 
primitive landmarks and institutions. But there is 
in our day, thank God, a spirit awakening far and 
wide to find once more a basis whereon the dis- 
persed sheep of Christ's flock may stand together; 
and may become, in the later age as in the olden 
time, again one fold, as we all have one Shepherd. 
This cannot be found in the chaotic ferment of un- 
ordered individualism ; nor can it be in mediaeval 
Romanism, or modern Papacy which has both ad- 



no THE NORTH AFRICAN CHURCH. 

ded new doctrines to the Apostolic Faith, and sub- 
verted the primitive constitution of the Apostolic 
Church. 

If Christendom shall ever be reunited, it must 
be on the basis of the creed, the orders, and the 
sacraments which " Holy Scriptures and ancient 
authors diligently read," shall evidence to have 
been existing " in the Church, from the Apostles' 
time" and through all the centuries when it yet 
was one. 

J. F. Garrison. 

311 Benson Street, Camden, N. J. 



Zbc Scbool of aieyanbria. 



I 



LECTURE IV. 

REV. JOHN H. EGAR, D.D., 
Rector of Zion Church, Rome, N. Y. 

THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

There are in this audience, I doubt not, those 
who have enjoyed the privilege, which has not been 
permitted to your lecturer, of making the voyage up 
the Nile. You are familiar with the present aspect 
of the city which bears the name of the great Greek 
conqueror, who founded it for the capital of his 
world-wide dominion. You know the unchange- 
able features of sea and sky, of burning sun and 
desert sands, of mighty river and distant hills, of 
pyramids almost as enduring as the mountains ; 
and you have felt the spell of that vast and won- 
drous civilization of ancient Egypt, of which the 
ruins were around you. If, from the contemplation 
of the desolate temples as they are now, you can 
reconstruct the grandeur of those temples as they 
stood perfect in their glory, with their forests of pil- 
lars, their colossal statues, their avenues of sphinxes, 
their armies of priests, and their multitudes of wor- 
8 



114 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

shippers, you must feel what a background they are 
for the scene of the conflict of Christianity with a 
paganism powerful enough, and earnest enough at 
one time, to have reared and peopled those monu- 
ments of its religion, and what a power that pagan- 
ism must have still possessed at the advent of our 
Lord, even though its mightiest works belonged to 
the then distant past. And you may appreciate 
the visible triumph of Christianity, and the great- 
ness of the revolution it had accomplished, when, in 
the year 386, the decree went forth from the Em- 
peror Theodosius and was executed, which shut 
them all up, and left them to become what they are 
seen to be to-day. 

But the Alexandria that now is, is no adequate 
representative of the Alexandria of the first centur- 
ies of the Christian era ; nor are the ruined temples 
of the Nile the monuments of the life that swarmed 
in its busy streets. The ancient Alexandria was 
more a Greek than an Egyptian city ; but its com- 
mercial position made it cosmopolitan. Its popu- 
lation of a million souls was made up of Greeks, 
Egyptians, and Jews, with a sprinkling of all other 
races. It was the centre at once of the commerce, 
the arts, and the learning of the time. It was, if I 
may so express myself, a New York for commerce, 
a Paris for art, for frivolity, for turbulence, and an 
Oxford and Cambridge for learning, all rolled into 
one. The outward life of Alexandria has been de- 
picted for us in works of imagination, by two mas- 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. II5 

ters of the art of description ^ and no mean reputa- 
tion for learning ; and if their knowledge of the city- 
is at fault, I am not able to correct it. Their his- 
toric characters, of course, have been accommodated 
to the needs of fiction ; they have not been Zolas 
in picturing the vice of a heathen city ; but they 
have represented Alexandrian life as they have con- 
ceived it from their severer studies, and we may 
conveniently think of it as they have drawn it. The 
Empire of Alexander did not last ; but under the 
Ptolemies Alexandria grew to be of importance, 
and when the Roman dominion unified the three 
continents the advantages foreseen by its founder 
accrued to it. Commanding the commerce of the 
Nile, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean, it be- 
came, for wealth, population, and power, the second 
city of the Empire. Profiting by the enlightened 
policy of the Ptolemies, who desired to know the 
world opened to them by the Macedonian con- 
quests, it became the centre of learning. Its great 
library was one of the wonders of the world ; and 
though the core of its culture was Greek, it inter- 
ested itself in all other intellectual developments, 
and the theosophies of the East, the traditional lore 
of the Egyptians, the sacred scriptures of the Jews, 
were welcome subjects for its inquiring minds, as 
well as the poetry and philosophy of the Greeks, 
and the physical science of the age. The cultivated 

* Charles Kingsley in Hypatia, and George Ebers in sev- 
eral works. 



Il6 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA, 

Alexandrian was above all things cosmopolitan. 
He aimed to know everything, to be everything, 
to harmonize everything. His chief deity was none 
of the traditional deities of the Egyptians, or Greeks, 
or Romans, or Syrians ; it was Serapis, an impor- 
tation from the shores of the Black Sea, whose pre- 
vious obscurity permitted him to be invested v/ith 
such attributes as the Alexandrian mind conceived 
to belong to Deity in general, and under whom, or 
beside whom, could coexist all the other deities 
which any idolator had been brought up to wor- 
ship. 

Into this great, wealthy, luxurious, learned, proud 
city, at some time in the second half of the first 
century, entered the Evangelist St. Mark with a 
few companions, to convert it to the Christian faith. 
What were the means and conditions of success ? 
Conceive a Christian congregation once established, 
what were the arms Avith which it was to contend 
against all that array of worldliness ? The answer 
is very simple, but implies a great deal. S. Mark 
came with the Gospel in the Church. The Christian 
congregation once established in Alexandria, pro- 
claimed the Gospel in the Church. That, I say, is 
the answer ; but it implies a great deal. For what 
is the Gospel in the Church ? 

Before we proceed to answer this question, let us 
look at some of the providential provisions, in the 
age preceding our Lord, for opening the way for the 
Gospel in this city of Alexandria. M, Guizot 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. WJ 

somewhere has the remark that Christianity was 
planted at the confluence of three great civilizations, 
the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Roman. I venture 
the emendation that Christianity was planted at the 
confluence of four great civilizations, the Hebrew, 
the Greek, the Roman, and the Oriental. For, 
surely we must not overlook the power and influ- 
ence of that great Oriental civilization which had 
been developed in Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon ; 
nor may we think it was sufficiently represented by 
the Hebrew. We cannot understand the early his- 
tory of Christianity and its conflicts with heresy, 
unless we allow for the influence of Orientalism in the 
Gnostic sects. Now, Alexandria was the meeting- 
place of all these civilizations ; it was that which 
gave it its cosmopolitan character. Especially were 
the Jews numerous and influential there. The 
policy of Alexander and the earlier Ptolemies gave 
them equal political privileges with the Macedon- 
ians ; and as a great part of the commerce and 
banking of the city was in their hands, they asso- 
ciated on equal terms with the other races in Alex- 
andria, and learned to accommodate themselves to 
their surroundings. Now, it is one law of the Provi- 
dential training of mankind, that position influences 
thought. The thought of the individual, whoever 
he may be, has relation to his age, his country, and 
his circumstances. The Jew in Alexandria being 
in a different position to that of the Jew in Pales- 
tine — being in contact with the great world of com- 



Il8 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

merce, of movement, of thought — could not be ex- 
clusive like the Palestinian Rabbi. He was put 
where he was by Divine Providence to see another 
side of Divine Revelation — to see its relations to 
the world at large — relations which the Rabbi at 
Jerusalem, with his Pharisaic exclusiveness, could 
not see. Among other things, he gave up the He- 
brew language and became a Hellenist, that is, a 
Greek-speaker. It was for the Jews of Alexandria 
that the Septuagint version of the Old Testament 
was made — the first example, it is said, of the trans- 
lation of a book from one language into another ; 
and so it came to pass that the sacred scriptures of 
the Mosaic covenant were accessible, not only to the 
Jews of the dispersion, but to such of the Gentile 
world as might desire to investigate them. But the 
learned Jews of Alexandria not only translated their 
scriptures into Greek ; they studied the Greek phil- 
osophers ; and so there arose the Hellenistic School, 
the exponent of a wider and more catholic Old 
Testament theology than that of the Rabbis of 
Palestine ; one that found points of contact between 
the Hebrew prophets and the sages of Greece. You 
remember how Apollos is spoken of in the Acts of 
the Apostles, as " an eloquent man and mighty in 
the Scriptures." He was a learned Alexandrian, 
the representative in Scripture of that school, which 
was an important intermediary between Gentile 
culture and Hebrew orthodoxy. 

The most illustrious member of the Jewish 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. II9 

school of Alexandria was Philo. He was a young 
man at the birth of our Lord, and lived till the 
middle of the first century. Though there is no 
evidence that Philo became a Christian, the influ- 
ence of his writings must have been great upon the 
Christian thinkers of iYlexandria, as it was upon the 
philosophers of the succeeding age. In fact, the in- 
fluence of this Jew upon Alexandrian philosophy is 
one of the most remarkable phenomena of the pe- 
riod. At the time of Philo, Greek philosophy was 
virtually dead. It had asked all possible questions, 
and failing to find an answer, it had degenerated in 
the New Academy into general skepticism and 
empty disputation. Philo regenerated it by giving 
it a new principle and a new doctrine. He had 
been trained in the knowledge of the Old Testa- 
ment scriptures: he had come to see in them, by 
his method of allegorical interpretation, a hidden 
mystery in every word ; and so he brought to Greek 
philosophy the new principle of Faith — not as ra- 
tional belief upon evidence divinely attested, but as 
the intuition of things divine ; and the new doctrine 
of the Logos ^ or Divine Word, not as S. John re- 
veals Him, the eternal Son of the Father, but as 
the chief of a world of " Potencies," or Powers, the 
revealers and agents of the absolute, incomprehen- 
sible Deity. It is not to be admitted that Alexan- 
drian theology is to be traced back to Philo rather 
than to S. John, or that S. John borrowed from 
Philo; the difference between Philo and S. John 



120 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

has been v/ell said to be that the Logos of Philo is 
a medium of disjunction, separating God from the 
world ; the Logos of the New Testament one of con- 
junction ; in Phiio it is because God is so far, in 
the New Testament because He is so near; in 
Philo the Logos is an unreal, in the New Testa- 
ment a real and essential Personality. While, then, 
Philo was studied by the Alexandrian Fathers as 
an expositor of the Old Testament, and influenced 
them not altogether well by his excessive allego- 
rism, they had in S. John's Gospel the corrective 
of his error, and were in no need of learning their 
theology from him. But in the domain of philo- 
sophy, where there was not this safeguard, his in- 
fluence was immense. His doctrine of the Logos 
and other Potencies was the starting-point of the 
Alexandrian Gnostic systems ; and after they had 
run their course it was the inspiration of the Neo- 
Platonic School, which was for centuries the shadow 
and the antagonist of Christianity. So that Philo 
was an authority in widely-differing and opposed 
schools. I say Philo, but Philo as the representa- 
tive of the Hellenistic School of Alexandria. And 
so it was that in this way the higher questions in- 
volved in Christianity became of interest to the 
thinkers of Alexandria, and so the Hellenistic 
School was an element in the preparation for Chris- 
tianity in that city ; because, when questions are 
once started, people are at least willing to hear those 
who profess to be able to answer them. 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 121 

Let us now return to our question — what were 
the arms with which the first preachers in Alexan- 
dria were furnished to subdue it to Christianity ? 

S. Mark and his associates did not come to the 
great city to teach the philosophy of Philo or any 
other philosophy ; they came to dear witness to the 
facts of the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, and to press home upon the conscience 
the need of salvation through Him. Their preach- 
ing was the assertion of those facts which are wit- 
nessed to in the records of the four Evangelists, one 
of whom was S. Mark himself, and which are 
summed up once for all in the Apostles' and Nicene 
Creeds. Put yourselves in the presence of polythe- 
ism, of a philosophy which justifies polytheism, of 
an eclectic philosophy which includes all polythe- 
isms, and you will see that these truths of the Apos- 
tles' and Nicene Creeds are no arbitrarily selected 
propositions, but the fundamental truths which it is 
necessary to insist upon, in order to turn the hearer 
from polytheism, from error, from idolatry, to the 
worship of the one true God, and to salvation 
through our Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps in saying 
this I am only repeating what has been said in other 
lectures of this course. If so, I beg that you will 
pardon the iteration, for it is necessary to my sub- 
ject. The Creed is simply the Gospel, so to speak, 
in portable form. The Creed is the Gospel, and the 
Gospel is the Creed ; the contents of each are equal ; 
they are the same. The facts confessed in the Creed 



122 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

were the facts taught by S. Mark and his success- 
ors in the first period of the Alexandrian Church, as 
in every period of its history. That was the founda- 
tion. That is the faith once delivered to the saints. 
That was the basis of the Alexandrian theology, as 
of all Catholic theology whatsoever. 

But further : — The convert to this Creed was, by 
the fact of believing it — not merely as an orthodox 
confession, but as a living faith — called and pledged 
to a life of purity, of honesty, of charity, of devo- 
tion, of holiness. His faith wrought repentance and 
amendment of life, hatred of sin and love of God, 
separation from the wickedness of the world, com- 
munion with God, and association with the people 
of God. It imposed upon him, therefore, for rea- 
sons natural, and for reasons supernatural — for dis- 
cipline, for safeguard, for training and instruction, 
for special helps of Divine grace, for the means of ad- 
vancement in holiness — the obligation of becoming 
incorporate, through the sacrament of baptism, in the 
visible Church, the community of the professed fol- 
lowers of Jesus Christ ; and of preserving his or- 
ganic union with that body and with its Head, 
through the Sacrament of the Holy Communion. 

Again : — By this admission to and continuance in 
the communion of the Church, he was placed under 
the supervision and government of its appointed and 
lawfully ordained officers, the bishops and clergy, 
and united in the bond of brotherhood with all its 
members, wheresoever dispersed throughout the 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 1 23 

world, and especially in his own locality. Moreover, 
if he were unfaithful, and therefore excluded from 
the communion of the Church, he was felt to be no 
longer in a state of salvation. No one can read the 
early records of Christianity without finding that the 
Church took this ground with regard to its members 
from the very first; and you will see, if you reflect a 
moment, that it could not do otherwise. At the 
present day, when Christianity is brought face to 
face with heathenism in the mission field, it is 
obliged to take the same ground. The missionary, 
whatever be his denominational standard, must and 
does act upon the method of the early Church, be- 
cause it is the only method of dealing with the cir- 
cumstances. 

This, then, is the foundation never to be lost 
sight of in tracing the course of Alexandrian 
theological thought. Let me here, then, call your 
attention to one of the lessons we are to learn from 
these lectures. Manifestly, in appealing to the 
thinking mind of a philosophic and cosmopolitan 
people, the first need is to get them to have a real 
grasp of the facts, that is, a real faith in them. 
The very atmosphere of toleration in which such a 
people lives is apt to generate an easy indifference 
or careless acquiescence, instead of a real faith ; and 
to create in the mind of the thinker who cares to 
consider them, the disposition to explain them 
away so as to make them fit into his own eclectic 
system. I ask you to take notice, then, how Chris- 



124 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

tianity from the very beginning adopted the method 
of the inductive philosophy — of that philosophy 
which dominates us at the present day — of that 
philosophy of which Bacon is the expounder, and 
which we recognize as the mother of all true science 
— the method which starts with facts, and upon the 
solid basis of facts erects its edifice of reasoning. 
The principle is that facts are superior to theories ; 
and it was by maintaining this principle that the 
faith of the Church overcame all the philosophies of 
the ancient world. Facts are superior to theories, 
and therefore, when the fact and the theory come 
in conflict, the theory must give way to the fact, 
and not the fact to the theory. So it was that 
Christianity entered in among the philosophical 
theories of the ancient world, and among the phil- 
osophical theories of that great and learned city of 
Alexandria. It proclaimed certain facts of which it 
had sufficient witness. " That which was from the 
beginning," says S. John in his first Epistle, " which 
we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, 
which we have looked upon and our hands have 
handled of the Word of life .... that which 
we have seen and heard, declare we unto you." 
" We are witnesses of these things," say the Apostles 
in the Acts, time and again ; and so it was every- 
where. Now, these facts of the life and death and 
resurrection of our blessed Lord, of which the 
Apostles were witnesses, of which the Apostolic 
office is the continuous witness to the end of the 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 12$ 

world, will not fit into any false philosophy, whether 
it be the dualism or pantheism of the first, or the 
materialism of the nineteenth century. And there- 
fore the first question, in the first or the nineteenth 
century, upon which it depends whether the an- 
swerer is a Christian at all or not, is. Do you accept 
the facts ? or, as the baptismal interrogatory is, 
" Dost thou believe all the articles of the Christian 
faith as contained in the Apostles' Creed ? " If you 
do, then, your philosophy being true and right, 
will find here its explanation and completion ; but if 
it be a false and wrong philosophy, it will find here 
its correction and antidote. That was how Chris- 
tianity entered into the thought of the world, not 
in Alexandria only, but everywhere. That was how 
it fought its fight and won its victories. That was 
the line which divided the theology of the Church 
from the speculations of the heretics. The heretic 
pared away the facts of the faith to fit his theories ; 
the Catholic theologian fitted his theories to his 
facts, he built up his theolog>^ on the faith once de- 
livered to the saints. The truths or facts, divinely 
revealed if supernatural, sensibly perceived if nat- 
ural — the truths or facts of the unity of God, of the 
Eternal Sonship, of the Incarnation of the Son of 
God, of His human life, death, and resurrection, of 
the Holy Spirit, of the Catholic Church as a visible 
and really existing society, of the forgiveness of sins,. 
the future resurrection, and the life everlasting — • 
these were preached as facts, not as speculations, or 



126 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

opinions, or theories ; they were to dominate theo- 
ries because they are facts, and only as they are ac- 
cepted for facts is a Christian theology possible. 
That was true in the first century, it is just as true 
in the nineteenth. 

The difference, then, between the theologians of 
the Alexandrian Church and the heretical teachers 
who claimed after a sort the Christian name, was 
that the theologians followed what Clement and 
Origen call " the ecclesiastical rule; " while the here- 
tics interpreted or mutilated Holy Scripture and 
the Christian faith according to notions and opin- 
ions current in the outside world. Now, the first 
evidence we have of literary or intellectual activity 
in the Alexandrian Church comes to us in connec- 
tion with the appearance of heretical teachers ; and 
this explains what is perhaps the earliest contem- 
porary notice of that Church now extant — a notice 
which, unless this circumstance is attended to, 
would convey a very unfavorable impression. For 
half or three-quarters of a century after its founda- 
tion, the Church in Alexandria pursued the even 
tenor of its way, leaving few or no written memor- 
ials to attest its works of faith, of piety, and charity. 
And yet by the reign of Hadrian (a.d. i 17-138) it 
had become so important that that versatile, super- 
ficial, and inquisitive Emperor, in a letter to his 
friend, the Consul Servianus, thus describes the 
state of public opinion as he found it in Alexan- 
dria : ^* I have become," he says, " perfectly familiar 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 12^ 

With Egypt, which you praised to me. It is fickle, 
uncertain, blown about by every gust of rumor. 
Those who worship Serapis are Christians, and those 
are devoted to Serapis who call themselves bishops 
of Christ. There is no ruler of a synagogue there, 
no Samaritan, no Christian presbyter, who is not an 
astrologer, a sooth-sayer, a quack. The patriarch 
himself [i.e., the Jewish patriarch, for there were no 
Christian patriarchs at this time], whenever he 
comes to Egypt, is compelled by some to worship 
Serapis, by others to worship Christ." Now, it is 
safe to say that, as a notice of the real Church in 
Alexandria, this is not true or near the truth, and 
that Hadrian had little or no acquaintance with 
that Church. As a satirical comment upon the 
state of public opinion, and a witness to the syn- 
cretistic spirit which lay at the foundation of the 
Gnostic heresies of Alexandria, it has its value. 
But it shows incidentally how great had been the 
progress of the Church, even at this early period, 
thus to infuse into the whole atmosphere of the city 
an interest in Christianity. This letter of Hadrian 
is illustrated by one or two quotations from Clem- 
ent and Origen, which I wish to read to you. 
Clement is prosecuting the argument that the true 
doctrine is that which has been preserved in the 
Church from the beginning, and that the " human 
assemblies " which the heretics called together were 
posterior to the Catholic Church. " For the teach- 
ing of our Lord at His advent," he says, " beginning 



128 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

with Augustus and Tiberius, was completed in the 
middle of the time of Tiberius. And that of the 
Apostles, including the ministry of Paul, ends with 
Nero. It was later, in the times of Hadrian the 
King, that those who invented the heresies arose ; 
and they continued to the times of Antoninus." * 
Now, Origen makes the acute remark " that heresies 
of different kinds have never originated from any 
matter in which the principle involved was not im- 
portant and beneficial to human life." He is an- 
swering the objection of Celsus, that Christianity is 
unworthy of attention because " the Christians were 
divided and split up into factions, each individual 
desiring to have his own party." Origen replies 
with the remark just quoted, that Christianity is 
for that very reason worth attending to, because 
heresies do not arise in a matter of no interest or 
importance. He instances the various schools of 
medicine and philosophy, and proceeds : " So, then, 
seeing Christianity appeared an object of veneration, 
not to the servile class only, as Celsus supposes, but 
to many among the Greeks who were devoted to 
literary pursuits, there necessarily originated here- 
sies, not as the result of faction and strife, but 
through the earnest desire of many literary men to 
become acquainted with the doctrines of Christian- 
ity." ' This was natural in an age of inquiry, and 
in an eclectic city like Alexandria, where knowledge 
was encyclopaedic in its range, and endeavored to in- 
' Stromata VII., 17. ' Origen against Celsus, III., 13. 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 12^ 

elude all opinions. It explains, as I said, Hadrian's 
satire, not upon Christianity, but upon Alexandria. 
If you reflect, you will , see that just such "literary 
men " were the ones who were likely to fall into 
Hadrian's way, and from whom he would form his 
opinion of the Alexandrians. But you will see also 
that Christianity must have made great progress in 
Alexandria, to have impressed so many literary men 
with a desire to appropriate from it in making up 
their systems, just as soon as tolerant emperors, as 
Trajan and Hadrian were, began to discourage 
wholesale persecution. 

The heretics of this period are those known as 
Gnostics. They have been brought before you in the 
Lecture on the School of Antioch ; and I shall only 
remark that, while the philosophical basis of the 
Syrian Gnosticism was dualism, that of the Alex- 
andrian was pantheism ; and that under this guid- 
ing principle the Alexandrian Gnostic endeavored 
to form, in accordance with the genius of the city, a 
comprehensive system which would explain and 
justify all the various religions and philosophies of 
the ancient world, and combine them in a harmonious 
whole. Now, no one could do that with Christian- 
ity, without finding it necessary to falsify the record, 
to explain away the facts, to say in effect : We under- 
stand this better than the writers of the Gospel, 
and the teachers of the Church ; we are able to 
penetrate below the surface ; we have insight to see 
the truth underlying their statements ; we can cor- 

9 



130 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

rect their mistakes. That is why these speculators 
are called heretics, rather than philosophers. A 
philosopher who simply left Christianity out of his 
system was not a heretic, he was a heathen ; a phil- 
osopher who took a mutilated or falsified version of 
the facts of the Gospel into his system was a heretic, 
because he depraved the faith. 

It would be a great mistake to think that the 
Gnostic heresiarchs were not profound thinkers, or 
earnest men ; and yet it is true, as Professor Salmon 
says, that " the zeal with which a learner commences 
the study of ecclesiastical history is not infrequently 
damped at an early stage, when he finds that, \\\ order 
to know the history of religious thought in the 
second century, he must make himself acquainted 
with speculations so wild and so baseless that it is 
irksome to read them, and difficult to believe that 
time was, when acquaintance with them was counted 
as what alone deserved the name of * knowledge.'" 
The conclusion which he draws from this is valuable 
for some among us at the present day. " Every 
union of philosophy and religion is the marriage of a 
mortal with an immortal ; the religion lives ; the 
philosophy grows old and dies. When the phil- 
osophic element of a theological system becomes 
antiquated, its explanations, which contented one 
age, become unsatisfactory to the next, and there 
ensues what is spoken of as a conflict between reli- 
gion and science ; whereas it is in reality a conflict 
between the science of one generation and that of a 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. I3I 

preceding one." Reflection upon this truth is much 
to be commended to some of our philosophic theol- 
ogians. So long as theology is true to its own 
tradition as realized in the Catholic creeds, it is like 
the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it witnesses, " the 
same yesterday, and to-day, and forever." Certainly 
this is the lesson taught by the mistakes, not only 
of the Gnostic heretics of Alexandria, but of the 
great philosophic theologian of its Catholic School, 
the saintly but unsainted Origen. 

We cannot understand Clement of Alexandria, 
without some knowledge of Basilides and Valen- 
tinus, the heads of two opposite schools of Alexan- 
drian Gnostics. The moral principles of Basilides 
were ascetic, those of Valentinus antinomian. I shall 
not attempt to explain their systems, but shall con- 
tent myself with a single observation upon each. 
The aim of all the Gnostic systems was, like that 
of Philo, to bridge over the distance between the 
absolute, unconditioned, infinite God, and the finite 
and conditioned universe. Basilides held the su- 
preme Being to be so absolute and so uncondi- 
tioned that he could not predicate anything whatso- 
ever of him, not even existence — he could not say 
even that He is. If therefore you reduce the account 
of his theology and cosmology given in Hippolytus ^ 
to its simplest terms, it may be stated thus : That 
the primeval Nothing at first produced Somethings 
and that from that Something grew Everythiiig, 
^ Hippolytus : Refutation of all Heresies, VH., 9 sq. 



132 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

" There is nothing new under the sun," and it would 
be difficult to find a more complete, condensed, and 
comprehensive statement of the modern doctrine of 
evolution than this. The system of Valentinus was 
the extreme illustration of the position " whatever 
is, is right ; " and for that reason moral progress was 
impossible under it. Perverting S. Paul, Valentinus 
held that mankind were of three different natures, 
and that their conduct was the result of their or- 
ganization, and therefore involved no moral re- 
sponsibility. You remember that S. Paul, at the 
close of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, says : 
" I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body 
be preserved blameless ; " and that in different places 
he speaks of the "carnal " man, the "natural" — or, 
to turn the Greek word into English, the " psychical" 
man, and the " spiritual '' man. Valentinus there- 
fore thought that some men were wholly material 
or carnal in nature ; these were heathens worship- 
ping material deities or idols, because they could not 
be anything else ; they were sensualists in morals, 
because they had no higher moral power. Other 
men had a body and soul; these were the "natural" 
or " psychical " men of S. Paul ; they were Jews 
and ordinary Christians; they worshipped the 
Creator and observed his law, which was contained 
in the Old Testament, and after this life would go 
to a soul-heaven. But then, this Creator whom 
they worshipped was not the Supreme God ; there 
was above him a spiritual God, and a spiritual 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA, 1 33 

heaven, reserved for the spiritual men, that is, the 
Gnostics, who being "spiritual," were not under the 
law, being made perfect by knowledge. 

You will ask how such a doctrine could be counted 
sufficiently Christian to be called heretical. And 
yet, if you had the original documents you would 
be astonished to find how much Scripture they 
could pervert to favor their dogmas ; and you 
would see the value of the faith of the Church as 
the interpreter of Scripture. The Valentinians were 
heretics because they depraved the faith in Christ 
to accommodate it to these ideas. According to 
them, Jesus or Saviour was one person, Christ was 
another. Jesus was a spiritual emanation from the 
region of the Supreme ; Christ was a psychical creat- 
ure from the region of the Creator. Christ lived 
upon earth thirty years in the practice of virtue ac- 
cording to the law, and then at his baptism, Jesus 
or Saviour came down upon him, and he became 
Jesus Christ. As this twofold being, it was his 
mission to enlighten the "spiritual" men with 
the true gnosis which made them Gnostics, and so 
to prepare them for the spiritual heaven. Having 
accomplished this by his teachings, the Saviour for- 
sook Christ, and Christ alone then wrought the re- 
demption for " psychic " natures by suffering upon 
the cross. As there is no redemption for material 
or " carnal " natures, they simply perish, and the 
material world will be annihilated in the fire which 
shall be at the last day. 



134 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

If you have condescended to follow me thus far, 
you see some of the problems which were to be 
solved by the Catholic theologians of the School of 
Alexandria. They were, first of all, to uphold the 
teaching of the Church, the integrity of the Gospel, 
and the truths and facts of the faith as handed down 
from the beginning. They were to present to the 
thinkers of the great city a theology of the Creed 
and the Scriptures which should not only refute 
Gnosticism and heathen philosophy, but which 
should draw to itself the philosophic mind by true 
explanations of the relation of the Creator to the 
creation, and of the Saviour to the souls He came 
to save. They must present also a philosophy of 
human life and conduct which should show every 
man to be saveable, which should invite every man 
to faith, and which should lead the disciple onward 
to that true gnosis which is the knowledge of God, 
and of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. They 
must, in a word, not only release philosophy from 
Gnostic speculations, but lead it captive to the obe- 
dience of Christ. 

In Clement and Origen, the Alexandrian Church 
found teachers competent for the work before them. 
They were successively heads of the Catechetical 
School of Alexandria, which under them became a 
renowned centre of Christian learning. I want you 
to understand what this Catechetical School was, 
as its peculiar character has much to do with our 
properly understanding Clement. It was not a 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA, 1 35 

theological seminary, as we understand the term. 
It was not a school for training clergy in the knowl- 
edge, theoretical or practical, appertaining to their 
profession. It was primarily the school for the 
Catechumens — that is, for those who were investi- 
gating or being instructed in Christian doctrine pre- 
paratory to their baptism. Originally it was not a 
school for the members of the Church at all, but for 
those who were seeking admission to the Church. 
It was a school after the manner of the philosophical 
schools which were so numerous in Alexandria — a 
school, not for boys, but for grown-up men and 
women, held in the house of the teacher, and free 
to all who chose to attend. As Christianity at- 
tracted the attention of the educated class, men 
who were graduates of other schools, or even mas- 
ters in them, might be scholars in this. It was im- 
perative, therefore, that the teacher be a man of in- 
tellect and learning, well versed in the science and 
philosophy of the age, and able to cope with the 
bright minds among his hearers. Such men were 
Pantaenus, Clement, and Origen. They gave the 
Catechetical School a high intellectual character, 
discussed philosophy in its relation to Christianity, 
and solved the difficulties and confirmed the faith 
of the cultured catechumen. The curriculum in 
certain directions was perhaps in advance of what 
that of a professional school intended exclusively 
for the clergy would have been. I say in certain 
directions; but there was one limitation imposed 



136 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA, 

upon it, by its nature as a Catechetical School, which 
must be taken into account in studying the works 
that emanated from it. The times of which I am 
speaking were times when the Christians were ex- 
posed to persecution, and therefore when it was 
necessary for the Church to guard its assemblies 
from intrusion, and its mysteries from profanation. 
It was therefore, of necessity, organized in some sort 
as a secret society whose pass-words, as the Lord's 
Prayer and the Creed, whose sacraments and peculiar 
usages, and the doctrines of grace they implied, were 
not formally explained or taught to the believer 
until his constancy had been tested, and he had 
been actually initiated by baptism. In the Cate- 
chetical School, therefore, it being a school for the 
uninitiated, these matters were carefully and enig- 
matically alluded to, in language which would be 
understood only by those who were in full com- 
munion with the Church. This, it seems to me, is 
what is meant by the disciplina arcani, or " disci- 
pline of the secret," of which we read in this period 
of Church history. 

Now, it is from not attending to this that a wrong 
impression prevails concerning the teachings of 
Clement of Alexandria. It is supposed by some 
that he deals with the subjects before him as a philo- 
sophic theologian, with no Church tradition behind 
him ; whereas he really deals with them as a Cate- 
chist, and as an author whose writings were intended 
for those who were not of the Church, as well as for 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA, 13/ 

those who were. In the first chapter of the Stromata 
Clement declares his method. His instructors, he 
says, preserving the tradition of the blessed doctrine 
from the holy Apostles Peter and James, and John 
and Paul, transmitted it to him. He stores up his 
memoranda, therefore, as an outline of the vigorous 
discourses he was privileged to hear, and as a me- 
morial of blessed and remarkable men. But in do- 
ing so he observes a wise caution. " The mysteries," 
he says, " are delivered mystically, that what is 
spoken may be in the mouth of the speaker ; rather 
not in his voice, but in his meaning." " Some things 
I purposely omit in the exercise of a wise selection, 
. . . some things my treatise will hint ; on some 
it will linger ; some it will merely mention. . . . 
The dogmas taught by remarkable sects will be ad- 
duced, and to these will be opposed what ought to 
be said. . . so that we may have our ears ready 
for the reception of the tradition of true knowledge, 
the soil being cleared of thorns and weeds in order 
to the planting of the true vine." 

And so it is that, as the very last thing in the ex- 
tant portion of the Stromata (for it is incomplete, 
and was never finished), Clement shows that all his 
labor has been to lead the thinking reader to the 
Church. Immediately following the passage which 
I quoted concerning the antiquity of the Church 
doctrine and the lateness of the heresies, Clement 
says : " The true Church, that which is really ancient, 
is one^ and in it are enrolled those who, according to 



138 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA, 

God's purpose, are just. For because God is one, 
and the Lord one, that which is most honorable is 
lauded for its singleness, being an imitation of the 
One. In the nature of the One, then, is associated 
in joint heritage the One Church, which the heretics 
strive to cut asunder into many sects. . . . The 
pre-eminence of the Church, as the principle of 
union, is in its oneness, in this surpassing all things 
else, and having nothing like or equal to itself." 

This is from that which is almost the concluding 
paragraph of Clement's great work — his Trilogy, I 
might call it, for it includes three separate yet con- 
nected treatises from which his teaching is to be 
gathered. They are. The Exhortation to the Greeks ; 
the Instructor, so-called ; and the Stro7nateis, a word 
meaning patchwork, and translated " Miscellanies,'* 
because of its discursive character. Their object is, 
I must insist, not to present the theology of the 
Church in its completeness, but rather to serve as 
an introduction to theology proper — to carry on 
Clement's work as a Catechist by withdrawing the 
reflecting mind outside the Church from the false 
gnosis of the heretics, and bringing it to seek the 
true gnosis of the Christian life. They show a man 
of immense reading, and could have been written 
nowhere but in the vicinity of a great library like that 
of Alexandria. 

In the Exhortation to the Greeks, Clement pleads 
with them to abandon the impious mysteries of 
idolatry for the adoration of the Divine Word and 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 1 39 

the Father ; he exposes the absurdity of their myths, 
their sacrifices, and their images ; he shows that by 
Divine help, some of their philosophers and poets 
caught glimpses of the truth ; he answers the objec- 
tion that it is not right to abandon the customs of 
their fathers ; and shows how great are the benefits 
conferred on man through the coming of Christ. 
His object in this book is to invite to faith and bap- 
tism, and the way in which he speaks of baptism in 
this treatise may illustrate what I have said of his 
method of allusion to the Sacraments. In the 
chapter on forsaking the customs of their fathers, he 
says : " Receive then the water of the Word ; wash, 
ye polluted ones ; purify yourself from custom by 
sprinkling yourselves with the drops of truth." In 
what way, he asks in another place, is a stranger per- 
mitted to enter the Kingdom of Heaven ? and an- 
swers, " When he is enrolled and made a citizen, 
and receives one to stand to him in the relation of 
father [he alludes, you see, to the sponsor or god- 
father at baptism] ; then he will be occupied with the 
Father's concerns ; then shall he be deemed worthy 
to be made his heir ; then will he share the Kingdom 
of the Father with his own dear Son. For this is the 
Church of the First-born, composed of many good 
children ; these are the first-born enrolled in heaven, 
who hold high festival with so many myriads of 
angels." Again he veils his meaning by an allusion 
to the heathen mysteries while speaking of the 
Church : " O truly sacred mysteries ! O stainless 



140 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

light ! My way is lighted with torches and I survey 
the heavens and God ; I become holy while I am 
initiated. The Lord is the hierophant, and seals 
while illuminating him who is initiated, and presents 
to the Father him who believes, to be kept safe for- 
ever. , . . If it is thy wish, be thou also initiat- 
ed, and thou shalt join the choir of angels around 
the unbegotten and indestructible and only true 
God, the Word of God raising the hymn with us. 
This Jesus, who is eternal, the one great High Priest 
of the one true God and His Father, prays for and 
exhorts men." 

In the last two sentences we may perceive an al- 
lusion to the Eucharistic service, to the Trisagion 
Hymn, and to the Consecration Prayer, but so as 
not to reveal the mysteries to the uninitiated. 
The members of the Church would understand; 
the others would not — and that was Clement's 
intention. In the same veiled way he speaks in a 
passage in the Stroinata, when his meaning is plain 
to those who can read between the lines : '' * Taste 
and see that the Lord is Christ,' it is said. For so 
He imparts of Himself to those who partake of such 
food in a more spiritual manner ; where the soul 
nourishes itself, according to the truth-loving Plato. 
For the knowledge of the Divine essence is the meat 
and drink of the Divine Word. Wherefore, also, 
Plato says in the second book of the Republic : — 
* It is those who sacrifice, not some cheap thing, ' 
» Literally ** a pig." 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. I4I 

but some great and difficult sacrifice,' who ought to 
inquire respecting God. And the Apostle writes, 
* Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us ' — a sacri- 
fice indeed hard to procure, even the Son of God 
consecrated for us." ^ 

So again he speaks of the ministry of the Church 
in the same allusive way, as in the following pas- 
sage, where he is speaking of degrees of glory in 
heaven, and saying that those who attain the high- 
est holiness shall have the chief seats in the heav- 
enly Kingdom. " Those, then, who have exercised 
themselves in the Lord's commandments and lived 
perfectly according to the gospel, may be enrolled 
[hereafter] in the chosen body of the Apostles. 
Such an one is in reality a presbyter of the Church, 
and a true deacon of the will of God, if he do and 
teach what is the Lord's ; not as being ordained by 
men, nor regarded righteous because a presbyter, 
but enrolled in the presbyterate because righteous. 
And although here on earth he be not honored 
with the chief seat \i.e.^ the seat of the bishop], he 
will [there] sit down on the four and twenty thrones, 
judging the people as John says in the Apocalypse. 
. . . For, according to my opinion, the grades 
here in the Church of bishops, presbyters, deacons, 
are imitations of the angelic glory, and of that econ- 
omy which the Scriptures say awaits those who, fol- 
lowing the footsteps of the Apostles, have lived in 
perfection of righteousness according to the Gospel." " 
' Stromata, V., 10. "" lb., VI., 13. 



142 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

You see clearly from these extracts what Cle- 
ment's method was in dealing, in these works, with 
those matters of Church polity and sacramental 
grace which, in an age of contradiction and persecu- 
tion, were not for prudential reasons spoken of 
openly to the outside world ; and you see also that, 
so understood, his testimony is the same as that of 
the other Fathers, to the ministry and worship of 
the Church. To return to our analysis of his writ- 
ings : The second work, '* The Instructor," is prac- 
tical. The English word used for the title of the 
translation does not accurately express the Greek. 
Clement calls it the irathaywyo^y from which we have 
the two words page and pedagogue. The Greek 
iraiha^ayyo'^ was not the schoolmaster or instructor ; 
but the attendant, governor, or page who led the 
young child to the schoolmaster, and who had the 
supervision, not of his education, but of his conduct 
and manners. In this book, then, Clement repre- 
sents Christ as the " Page " of the Christian after 
baptism, forming his manners according to the Gos- 
pel. His object in this treatise is to speak to the 
outside world, as well as to the children of the 
Church ; and so, observing the same reserve as be- 
fore, he deals with the external behavior of Chris- 
tians in their intercourse with the world. It is in 
fact a treatise upon manners and morals, rather than 
on ethics ; and it leads to the ethical science of the 
Stromata. "Our superintendence in instruction 
and discipline," he says, " is the object of the Word, 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. I43 

from whom we learn frugality, humility, and all 
that pertains to love of truth, love of man, and love 
of excellence. In the case of those who are trained 
by this influence, even their gait in walking, their 
sitting at table, their food, their sleep, their going to 
bed, their regimen, and their mode of life, acquire a 
superior dignity. Not only is it requisite to contem- 
plate the Divine, we must also contemplate human 
nature, to live as the truth directs, and to admire 
the instructor and his injunctions ; according to 
whose image, conforming ourselves to Him, and 
making the word and our deeds agree, we ought to 
live a real life.'' 

Having thus shown the outside world how Chris- 
tianity forms the manners and earthly life of the 
Christian, Clement proceeds in the Strornata to 
show how it makes him a true Gnostic. To the 
mere reader the Strornata must be very tiresome, 
while to the student it is the most interesting of 
Clement's works. It seems to me that he had a 
threefold object in writing it : the first was to allure 
the higher intellect of the Greeks to Christianity ; 
the second, to lay down a true philosophy of human 
nature, in opposition to the speculations of Basilides, 
Valentinus, and other false Gnostics ; and the 
third, to stimulate the Christian disciple to a wider 
culture and a sympathetic interest in the intellec- 
tual world around him. It is evident, from the 
way in which the Strornata begins, that it was a 
question with some whether he ought to write at 



144 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA, 

all ; and he has several times to allude to the nar- 
rowness of certain among the brethren. 

This explains Clement's attitude with regard to 
philosophy. He knew very well that persons are 
brought together by understanding one another ; 
and therefore it was for his interest as a catechist, 
as well as from his conviction as a scholar, that he 
asserted philosophy to be a divine gift to the 
Greeks, and a preparation of the Gentile world for 
Christianity. Clement did not do what Origen did 
to his hurt, accept philosophy as supplementary to 
revelation and the tradition of the Church ; he did 
not compound a doctrine partly philosophical and 
partly religious ; what he did was to show that 
Christianity had the criterion b}^ which to judge of 
philosophy, and the means of bringing it to perfec- 
tion ; and therefore that the philosopher, having 
been brought so far on his way by philosophy, 
needed Christianity for his completion. "At one 
time," he says, "philosophy justified the Greeks — 
not conducting them to perfect righteousness, but 
as the first and second flights of steps help you in 
your ascent to the upper room, and as the gram- 
marian helps the philosopher. But the teaching 
which is in Christ is complete in itself and without 
defect, being the * power and wisdom of God,' and 
the Hellenic philosophy does not by its approach 
make the truth more powerful." And here a re- 
mark is necessary as to Clement's idea of philosophy. 
" By philosophy," he says, " I do not mean the 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 145 

Stoic, or the Platonic, or the Epicurean, or the 
Aristotelian ; but whatever has been well said by 
any of those sects which teach righteousness along 
with a science pervaded by piety — this eclectic 
whole I call philosophy." ^ Now, it has been well 
said that in the region of pure philosophy an eclec- 
tic system is an impossibility. For how is one to 
choose out from the various systems that which is fit 
and right and true, unless one has beforehand a cri- 
terion of truth, that is, a system of his own ? But 
the previous system, according to which one is to 
judge and to select, is the real philosophy, and its pre- 
existence negatives eclecticism. In the region of 
pure philosophy this is a valid objection ; but it does 
not touch Clement, because in the Christian faith he 
had a criterion of judgment, and in the ecclesiasti- 
cal rule and tradition of which he has so much to 
say, and the importance of which I pointed out at 
the beginning of this lecture. 

The position, which is undoubtedly a true one, 
that philosophy was a gift to the Greeks from the 
Divine Word, the Eternal Son, who became flesh 
and dwelt among us ; who, as He gave the Law and 
the Prophets to the Jews, left Himself not without 
witness among the nations of the earth, was of im- 
mense use to Clement in that it furnished the basis 
for the complete refutation of the Gnostic heresies 
of all kinds. For if the Divine Logos had thus 
secretly prompted the Greeks to search for truth 

'Stromata, I., 7. 
10 



14^ THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

and to prepare for His coming, it was because they 
and all mankind, as well as all things visible and in- 
visible, were the creatures, not of a subordinate 
Creator, but of the infinite and supreme Father, by 
the Son, through the Holy Spirit. And so the 
whole Gnostic Pleroma, with its Eons, its Demiurge, 
and its distinction of spiritual and psychic heavens, 
was swept away at once. So surely does the state- 
ment of the truth bring to nought the ignorance of 
foolish men. It vindicated also the unity of human 
nature, and the spiritual capacity of all men for the 
truth as revealed in Christ. Men are not of differ- 
ent natures, some material, some psychic, and some 
spiritual. The carnal or natural man, in S. Paul's 
phrase, is the man who rejects the spiritual wisdom 
of the Word ; the spiritual man is he who follows 
it. So it put upon its true ground the distinction 
between faith and knowledge, and their mutual de- 
pendence. The Gnostics held that sense was the 
material intellect ; that faith was the relation be- 
tween the psychic soul and the Demiurge, or finite 
creator ; and that knowledge was the spiritual illu- 
mination of the Gnostic, lifting him up to the ab- 
solute and unconditioned Supreme Being. Clem- 
ent spends much time in demonstrating that faith 
is not the attribute of a particular nature, but an act 
of the soul reaching out to God and accepting the 
revelation of Christ ; that knowledge is not the at- 
tribute of another nature, but that it is the passing 
of faith into certainty ; and therefore, that faith is 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 147 

the foundation of all true knowledge. So again, 
matter is not evil, and the body is not evil ; and 
therefore, the true Gnostic does not despise the 
body, but keeps it in subjection ; he neither prac- 
tises a degrading asceticism, nor indulges in corrupt 
living ; he is willing to be a martyr for the truth, 
but is not needlessly to expose himself; he lives in 
that communion with God which makes him con- 
tent, whether present in the body, or absent with 
the Lord. 

The work of Clement against the false Gnosti- 
cism was successful. From his time it declined in 
importance, and its place in opposition to Christian- 
ity was taken by Neo-Platonism. My time does 
not permit any examination of the Neo-Platonic 
system, and I shall make but one observation upon 
it. The need that the soul feels of times of con- 
scious communion with God, closer than that sense 
of constant dependence on Divine Providence which 
is the habit of the believing mind, is realized in the 
Church in prayer, in worship, and in the Holy Com- 
munion. Over against this, in all the non-Christian 
or uncatholic systems which have felt the need, 
there has been the attempt to realize it in the state 
of ecstasy or enthusiasm — using the word in the 
philosophical sense. This was the great practical 
opposition between Neo-Platonism and Christianity. 
In the approach to God through Christ, Christian- 
ity is sacramental ; in the approach to its philo- 
sophical deity, Neo-Platonism was extatic, enthusi- 



148 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA, 

astic, and theurgic. That was why Philo^s doctrine 
of faith and the Logos, adopted by Ammonius Sac- 
cas as a substitute for the Christian, did not help 
Neo-Platonism to the truth. You remember the 
vivid picture, in Charles Kingsley's novel, of Hypa- 
tia's attempt to attain the intuition of Deity ac- 
cording to the Neo-Platonic formula, by the utter 
cessation of all conscious thought and the absorption 
of the soul for the instant into the Divinity ; and you 
remember what, according to Kingsley, was its out- 
come. The representation is correct. From that 
quietistic phase, through all degrees, to the orgiastic 
phrenzy of the worshippers of Dionysus and Cybele 
on the one side, and to the hysteria of the revivalist, 
the trance of the " medium," or the stance of the 
spirit-rapper on the other, this idea has run its course; 
it has been the bond of union between false systems 
in every age ; and large volumes might be written 
upon its various developments. Ancient Christian- 
ity always insisted that the true doctrine of Divine 
Communion and of Inspiration was differenced 
from the false, by the fact that a true inspiration 
and a true communion were acts of the conscious 
being; whereas the false inspiration was always 
marked by the endeavor to attain it through a state 
of excitement or quietism, terminating in uncon- 
sciousness — that is to say, by the trance of the me- 
dium, or the hysterics of the revival. The theology 
of the sacraments is the corrective of this aberration. 
Through the Church system, of which they are the 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 1 49 

centre, we enjoy the communion with God in Christ 
under the conditions of faith, worship, obedience, 
and sacramental participation, which appertain to 
the calling of the Christian from darkness to light, 
from error to truth, and from the power of Satan 
unto God. 

When we turn from Clement of Alexandria to 
the study of the works of Origen, the first thing 
that strikes us is the strong common sense of the 
man, and with that, the vast reach of his mind, and 
the directness and force of his intellectual processes. 
Of his history and labors, the time at my command 
will not permit me to speak ; and when I tell you 
that the article on Origen, in the lately published 
" Dictionary of Christian Biography," extends to 
forty-eight large and closely printed pages, besides 
fourteen pages on the controversy about his reputa- 
tion after his death ; and that the multitude of his 
writings has been said (no doubt erroneously) to be 
6,000 in number, you will see that it is impossible 
to do him justice in a brief portion of one lecture. 

What a teacher Origen was ! Gregory Thauma- 
turgus, the Apostle of Armenia, was a pupil of his at 
Caesarea after he had left Alexandria. On leaving 
school he delivered a valedictory address which was 
a panegyric upon his master, in which he tells us of 
his method. His first care was to make a careful 
study of the pupil himself, and to form his mind by 
a course in logic and dialectics. He noted his 
capacity, his faults, his tendencies, and applied the 



ISO THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

proper correctives, developing endurance, firmness, 
patience, thoroughness. He then led him to the 
" lofty and divine and most lovely " study of exter- 
nal nature, or natural science, as it was known to 
the ancient world. " He made Geometry the sure 
and immovable foundation, and from this rose 
step by step to the heights of heaven and the most 
sublime mysteries of the universe." Moral science 
came next ; and here he laid the greatest stress upon 
the method of experiment. His life was a commen- 
tary upon his teaching. His own conduct was a 
more influential persuasive than argument, and by 
his example his scholars were enabled to perceive 
that the end of all was "to become like to God 
with a pure mind, and to draw near to Him and 
abide in Him." Then came Philosophy. His 
pupils were to examine the writings of philosophers 
and poets of every nation ; for them there was to 
be no sect, no party ; and in their arduous work 
they had a friend ever at hand in their master, who 
knew their difficulties and could guide them aright. 
So prepared, they were introduced to the study of 
Theology. " In the Holy Scriptures and the teach- 
ing of the Spirit, Origen found the final and abso- 
lute spring of Divine Truth." ^' Such," says Pro- 
fessor Westcott, " in meagre outline was, as Gregory 
tells us, the method of Origen. He describes what 
lie knew, and what his hearers knew. There is no 
parallel to the picture in ancient times. And when 
every allowance has been made for the partial en- 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 15I 

thusiasm of a pupil, the view which it offers of a 
system of Christian training actually realized, ex- 
hibits a type which we [with our schools and uni- 
versities and theological seminaries] cannot hope to 
surpass." 

As a theologian and a witness to Church teach- 
ing, Origen, whatever mistakes he fell into, and 
however he has been represented or misrepresented 
in succeeding ages, desired and intended to be true 
to the principle which I have shown to be at the 
base of the School of Alexandria. The traditional 
Creed of the Church was his safeguard, and it is 
only as he overpassed that, that he is exposed to 
censure. In the preface to his Principia he says : 
" As we ceased to seek for truth among those who 
claimed it for erroneous opinions, after we had come 
to believe that Christ is the Son of God, and were 
persuaded that we must learn it from himself ; so, 
seeing that there are many who think they hold the 
truth in Christ, but differ from their predecessors 
[we assert], since the teaching of the Church trans- 
mitted in orderly succession from the Apostles is 
preserved in the Churches to the present day, that 
that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs 
in no respect from ecclesiastical and apostolic tradi- 
tion." He then gives a summary of Christian doc- 
trine in the general order of the Creed, as the foun- 
dation of what he is about to say. 

Instead of endeavoring to give you an estimate of 
Origen as a theologian, let me show you the man 



152 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

himself by an extract from his writings. Where in 
all theology will you find a grander passage than 
this, with which he introduces the discussion of the 
Incarnation of our blessed Lord? " But of all the 
mighty and marvellous acts related of Him, this al- 
together surpasses human admiration, and is beyond 
the power of mortal frailty to understand or feel : 
how that mighty power of Divine Majesty, that 
very Word of the Father, that very Wisdom of God, 
in whom were created all things visible and invisible, 
can be believed to have existed within the frame of 
that man who appeared in Judea ; nay, that the 
Wisdom of God can have entered the womb, and 
have been born an infant, and have uttered wailings 
like the cries of a little child ! And that afterward 
it should be said that He was greatly troubled, say- 
ing, * My soul is sorrowful, even unto death ; ' and 
that at the last he was brought to that death which 
is accounted the most shameful among men — though 
He rose again the third day. Since, then, we see in 
Him some things so human that they differ in no 
respect from the common frailty of mortals, and 
some things so divine that they can belong to 
nothing else than the primal and ineffable nature of 
Deity, the narrowness of human understanding can 
find no outlet ; but, overcome with the amazement 
of a mighty admiration, it knows not whither to re- 
treat, or what to take hold of, or where to turn. If 
it think of a God, it sees a mortal ; if it think of a 
man, it beholds him returning from the grave, hav- 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 153 

ing overthrown the empire of death and laden with 
its spoils. And therefore the spectacle is to be con- 
templated with all reverence, that the truth of both 
natures may be clearly shown to exist in one and 
the same being ; so that nothing unworthy or unbe- 
coming may be thought in that Divine and ineffable 
essence ; nor yet those things which were done be 
supposed to be illusive and imaginary appearances. 
To utter these things in human ears, and to explain 
them in words, far surpasses the powers either of 
our rank, or of our intellect and language. I think 
that it surpasses the power even of the holy Apos- 
tles ; nay, the explanation of the mystery may per- 
haps be beyond the grasp of the entire creation of 
celestial powers. Regarding Him, then, we shall 
state in the fewest words the contents of our creed, 
rather than the assertions of human reason."^ 

It was as an expositor of Holy Scripture that 
Origen was most renowned. His labors upon the 
text were remarkable for that age ; he formed a col- 
lection of the various versions of the Old Testa- 
ment, which was called the Hexapla, because it was 
arranged in six parallel columns ; he is the first, or 
nearly the first, writer of commentaries; and Greg- 
ory tells us how pre-eminent he was as a lecturer 
upon the Bible. His method has been criticised as 
fanciful and dangerous ; and yet it appears to me, 
from his explanation of it in the Principia^ and 
when we compare it with the allegorism of Philo 
' Origen : De Principiis, II. 6. 



154 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

and Clement, to be marked with the strong com- 
mon sense which I find in all Origen's writings, 
even when he is admittedly unsound ; and to be in 
reality the method by which the true sense of Holy 
Scripture is ascertained. In the first place (and this 
is to be insisted upon), Origen endeavored to in- 
terpret Scripture according to the analogy of the 
faith and the tradition of the Church ; and how im- 
portant this principle was, at that time especially, 
can be known by seeing what the Gnostics made of 
Scripture when they interpreted it without this safe- 
guard. Let me give you a simple instance. We, 
who are taught by the Nicene Creed, have no difH- 
culty in understanding the first chapter of St. John's 
Gospel in its plain and natural sense : " In the be- 
ginning was the Word, and the Word was with God ; 
and the Word was God," and the rest. But the 
Gnostics interpreted it something in this way : In a 
certain Being, whose name was Beginning, because 
he was the first of all, there was a certain Power 
called Word ; and that Word was said to be with 
God, because He was the reflection of God in the 
mind of Beginning ; and the Word was said to be 
God, because as the reflection he was the duplicate 
of God. And so when they came to the verse, " In 
Him was life, and the life was the light of men," 
they made out two more beings whose names were 
Light and Life, and so on.^ In fact, if you would 

' This is not scientifically exact, but sufficiently so for pop- 
ular illustration. 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA, 155 

see a perfect reductio ad absurdum of the principle, 
*' The Bible and the Bible only, without note or 
comment,'' you have only to look at the Gnostic 
expositions of Scripture in the eighth chapter of the 
first book of Irenaeus against heresies. Against 
these follies the safeguard was the Creed and tradi- 
tion of the Church. The other day I read, in a 
paper devoted to the task of proving that Christians 
ought to keep Saturday instead of Sunday, an article 
which was really quite able, showing that our 
blessed Lord was crucified on Wednesday, and rose 
from the dead on Saturday ; and now that that idea 
is started, we shall probably hear more of it. What 
is the complete answer to that position ? It is sim- 
ply this, that the Church has kept Easter from the 
very beginning, and therefore cannot be uncertain 
as to the day of the week on which our Lord rose 
from the dead.^ That is the value of the tradition 
of the Church in the interpretation of Scripture; 
and so Origen claims that he " clings to the stan- 
dard of the heavenly Church of Jesus Christ accord- 
ing to the succession of the Apostles." Under this 
principle, Origen shows that there is a triple sense of 

* The Quarto deciman controversy, instead of weakening, 
adds force to the tradition ; a part of the Church keeping a 
day of the week, the other keeping the day of the month. 
There was no dispute either as to the day of the week or the 
day of the month. It was as if some kept Christmas always 
on the 25th December, and others on the Sunday nearest to 
that date. 



IS6 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

Holy Scripture; and as he has to vindicate the unity 
of human nature against the Gnostics, he likens this 
triple sense to the tripartite nature of man, the lit- 
eral sense corresponding to the bodily perceptions, 
the psychical or moral conveying instruction to the 
moral nature or soul, and the mystical or spiritual 
feeding the spirit, or religious nature. Now, al- 
though perhaps we do not speak in this way, yet 
there is no earnest and faithful preacher of the 
present day who does not attempt to draw from 
his text, in addition to its literal sense, the moral 
principle involved and the spiritual truth taught. 
Scripture has these three senses ; and though it is 
true that the principle of mystical interpretation has 
been carried to fanciful lengths, yet it is recognized 
in the New Testament, especially in the Epistle to 
the Hebrews. Origen, however, is censured for 
saying that certain passages in Scripture do not 
contain the " corporeal " or literal sense — by which 
he is thought to mean that they are not literally and 
historically true, and so to discredit the integrity of 
the record. It is possible that he may be open to 
that censure ; but if we look at the examples he 
gives in the fourth book of the Principia to illus- 
trate his meaning, I think we may relieve him of it 
by understanding him rightly. For example, he 
tells us that certain Jews refused to believe in our 
Lord because they did not find that prophecy liter- 
ally fulfilled after His advent — that the wolf was to 
feed with the lamb, and the leopard to lie down 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA, 157 

with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and 
the fatling together, and a little child to lead them. 
Again, he anticipates modern objections to the first 
chapter of Genesis, by showing that the first three 
days of creation could not be literal days — that is, 
days of sunlight followed or preceded by moonlight 
or darkness — because they passed before the sun and 
moon were set as lights in the heavens. So he 
says : " Cain, when going forth from the presence 
of the Lord, certainly appears to thoughtful men 
as likely to lead the reader to inquire what is the 
presence of God, and what is meant by going out 
from it." So also, we are not to understand liter- 
ally^ that the devil, taking our Lord up into a high 
mountain, showed to his bodily eye all the king- 
doms of the world and the glory of them ; because 
there is no mountain so high that they could pos- 
sibly be visible from it. One other example I must 
give to illustrate Origen's acuteness and hard com- 
mon sense ; the injunction, " If anyone smite thee on 
the right cheek, turn to him the other also," was not 
intended to be literally understood, " because he who 
strikes, unless he has some bodily defect, smites the 
left cheek with the rigJit hand." I am not learned 
in what remains of Origen's expository works, and 
cannot tell how far he sacrificed the letter ; but cer- 
tainly, as illustrated by these examples, and within 
these limits, I hold the principle to be sound. No 
one can have studied the Fathers of the Church 
without being profoundly impressed with the wealth 



15^ THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

of meaning they find in Holy Scripture, when they 
make use judiciously of that principle of type and 
prefiguration of which we are unjustly suspicious 
when we find it called " mystical." Melchizedek 
was a type of Christ ; so was Isaac bearing the wood 
for the sacrifice ; so was Joseph sold into Egypt ; so 
was Joshua leading the people over Jordan ; so was 
David establishing the kingdom of God in Israel ; 
so was Solomon building the temple ; so was Jonah ; 
so were others; and as they were types, so may 
their history be interpreted as prophecies of Christ 
and shadows of heavenly things. 

But Origen, though he did not intend to depart 
in any way from Catholic tradition, and the faith of 
the Church, stands as a beacon of warning to the 
theologians of later times, and as an illustration to 
us of the remark already quoted, that the marriage 
of religion with philosophy is the marriage of an im- 
mortal with a mortal, and that, while the religion 
lives, the philosophy dies away. In his statement 
of the truths attested by Christian tradition in the 
preface to the Prmcipia, Origen remarks that certain 
points were not clearly defined in the teaching of 
the Church, and therefore that inquiry was admis- 
sible and necessary in order to arrive at the proper 
conclusions respecting them. That inquiry he pur- 
sues, not dogmatically, but as a deliberation, and he 
expressly tells his reader that he must make up his 
own mind as to the value of his opinions. But it 
is just here that no one can follow him ; and no 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 159 

one can follow him here, because his opinions rest 
upon an adulteration of Catholic teaching with the 
current philosophy. Just at the time that Origen 
was rising to eminence, Neo-Platonism was attract- 
ing attention ; and in his large-minded desire to 
know all that could be known, Origen attended the 
lectures of Ammonius Saccas. From his philo- 
sophical studies Origen derived the ideas of a suc- 
cession of worlds ; of the pre-existence of souls ; of a 
previous probation of souls, by which he accounted, 
not only for the inequalities of birth, fortune, hap- 
piness, and capacity of human beings in this life, but 
for the different ranks and orders of the spiritual 
world, good and evil ; and of a state of indefinite 
discipline and progression by which all souls might 
be reclaimed and restored at last. Resulting from 
these ideas, he held a doctrine of free-will which 
might be cited as Pelagian by anticipation ; and car- 
ried his speculations so far as to suppose that the 
soul of our blessed Lord merited the union with 
Deity in the incarnation by the faith and love with 
which it clung to God in the pre-existent state, 
when all other souls fell away in a greater or less 
degree. The passage in which Origen develops this 
idea is, for its religious tone, one of the most beau- 
tiful in the Principia, but, beautiful as it is, it is base- 
less and dangerous; the idea is borrowed from phi- 
losophy, and perverts the texts of Scripture which 
Origen cites in its support. Hence it was, by the 
union of conclusions drawn from philosophy with 



l6o THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

conclusions securely founded on the faith of the 
Church, that Origen, though one of the greatest 
Catholic teachers, and not at all a heretic either in 
intent or fact, nevertheless furnishes in his writings 
so much that is unsound as to permit almost every 
subsequent heresy to support itself by his authority. 
This accounts for the violent controversy which 
raged about his memory in the subsequent ages; 
and this is the reason why his name stands as the 
warning to those who adulterate the pure truth of 
the Word with the opinions, or the philosophy, or 
the science, that are current in any particular age. 
When philosophy is finished, and when science is 
complete, then the harmony of religion with philoso- 
phy and science will be self-evident, and need no 
demonstration ; as long as philosophy and science 
are progressive and approximate, the key-stone that 
sustains the arch which joins them with theology 
cannot be put in place. One of the foundations is 
lacking, though the other is firm and sure. Where 
Origen expounded the Catholic faith, his work is as 
valuable now as ever; where he based opinions 
upon philosophy there is no thinker now, Catholic 
or heterodox, who will avow himself his disciple. 

The great reputation of Origen as a teacher caused 
him to be sought after to refute heresy in widely 
separated localities ; but it was under his friend and 
pupil Dionysius, who, after being head of the Cat- 
echetical school, was made Bishop in 247, that the 
Alexandrian Church began to exercise that ecumen- 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. l6l 

ical influence which in due time enabled Athana- 
sius to conquer the Arian heresy. With Dionysius 
learning ascended the Episcopal throne ; but the 
learning of Dionysius was not more conspicuous than 
the loving nature of the man, and his broad and 
sympathetic mind. The time was one of great dif- 
ficulty ; the Decian and Valerian persecutions oc- 
curred in his episcopate ; Rome was harassed by the 
Sabellian heresy and the Novatian schism ; the 
Church of Antioch by the worldliness of Paul of 
Samosata ; and the Alexandrian Church by carnal 
and materialistic notions of the life after the Resur- 
rection. Dionysius brought his influence to bear 
through the whole Church for peace and truth and 
right. His Episcopal correspondence was great, and 
his temper always kindly. Only fragments of his 
writings remain, but they show that controversy was 
not always acrimonious, and that to speak the truth 
in love is the way to win over those who are in 
error. 

It does not fall within the plan of this lecture to 
carry on the history into and beyond the Nicene age, 
and I cannot do more than speak the names of S. 
Athanasius and S. Cyril, those great champions of 
the Church against the Arian and Nestorian here- 
sies. One remark which has been made about S. 
Athanasius I must not permit to pass unnoticed. 
" His name," it has been said, " stands for the encour- 
agement of those who resist the Church in the inter- 
est of some higher truth which it has not yet learned 



l62 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

to appreciate ; his experience illustrates that one 
man standing out against the Church may be right, 
and the Church may be wrong ; and further, his life 
demonstrates how at all critical moments the faith 
takes refuge, not in institutions, but in individual 
men." The remark is not original with the author 
of the book from which I make this quotation ; but, 
borrowed or original, it would have been repudiated 
at once by Athanasius himself. He would have been 
the last man in the world to allow himself to be taken 
for the example and justification of any precocious 
juvenile who may set himself up to be wiser than 
the Church of God. It is indeed true that, in criti- 
cal moments, God in His goodness does raise up 
some great and commanding character to uphold 
the witness of His Church to the faith ; but 
this sentence, as an interpretation of Athanasius's 
place in Church history, is wholly wrong. The old 
phrase was not Athanasius contra ecclesiam^ but 
Athanasius contra mundum. At one time, indeed, 
when the pressure of the imperial will was too 
strong for men of less heroic temper than himself, 
he seemed to stand alone ; but it is not true that at 
any time the free voice of the Church was against 
him ; or that the heart and soul of the thousands 
and ten thousands of Christendom were not with 
him in his noble contention for the faith once de- 
livered to the saints. 

One question concerning the Alexandrian Church 
has pressed upon my mind in considering its event- 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 163 

ful history. How was it that so great and noble a 
Church as this was in the first five centuries, should 
have sunk so low in after-ages ? I do not know that 
I can give the answer ; but I have the opinion that 
one defect in its theology contributed to it. Not- 
withstanding the immense service it rendered to the 
Church Universal in vindicating the Divine side of 
the doctrine of the Incarnation, it seems to me that 
the Alexandrian Church had an insufficient appre- 
ciation of the human side of that mystery, and a re- 
sulting feebleness in apprehending the sacramental 
relation of the Christian to Christ Incarnate in the 
economy of redemption. Required by their rela- 
tion to the Gnostic heresies, and the Arian and 
Nestorian impieties, to vindicate the deity of the 
Son, and the universal influence of the Logos in cre- 
ation and in humanity, the Alexandrian Fathers 
paid less attention to the special relation into which 
the believing Christian is brought to the Redeemer, 
through the sacramental communion with Him as 
the Head and Restorer of fallen human nature. It 
is startling, when we remember the Monophysite 
controversies of the fifth century, to come across 
the following passage in the Stromata of Clement, as 
early as the beginning of the third century : " The 
[true] Gnostic is such that he is subject only to the 
affections which exist for the maintenance of the 
body, such as hunger, thirst, and the like. But in 
the case of the Saviour it were foolish to suppose 
that the body, as a body, demanded the necessary 



l64 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

aids in order to its duration. For He ate, not for 
the sake of the body, which was kept together by 
a holy energy, but in order that it might not en- 
ter into the minds of those who were with Him, to 
entertain a different opinion of Him ; as certainly 
some afterward supposed that He appeared in a 
phantasmal shape. But He was entirely impas- 
sible ; inaccessible to any movement of feeling, 
either pleasure or pain." ^ That is not true. He 
was an hungered ; He was athirst ; He said, " My 
soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death ; " He 
was " in all points tempted like as we are, yet with- 
out sin." It is not true, and the results of the 
teaching founded upon it were disastrous to the 
Alexandrian Church. The idea of an impassive 
Christ, accepted as the ideal of Egyptian monasti- 
cism, reacted to promote the acceptance of the 
Monophysite heresy, when the imperial power at- 
tempted to enforce the decrees of Chalcedon against 
the patriarch Dioscorus. Under this influence the 
Coptic portion of the Egyptian patriarchate broke 
with the Church and the Empire, made a feeble re- 
sistance to their enemies, accepted the Mohamme- 
dan domination, and was ground down beneath its 
iron heel. 

And this may teach us of the present day that 

the Christian Faith, delivered in its integrity at the 

beginning, and witnessed to by the continuous and 

consentient testimony of the Church of all ages, is 

* Stromata, B. VI., ch. 9. 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. I65 

greater than any particular school of thought ; and 
that, so far from theological schools having " devel- 
oped " it into something more than it was at first, 
there is no particular school which has adequately 
explained it. You may understand what I mean 
by considering a fact which is within the experience 
of a devout Christian layman. Such an one, be- 
lieving as he does the Creed in its fulness, though 
unable to explain his thought in theological terms, 
hears perhaps some able discourse in which he in- 
stinctively detects a false note. He may not be 
able to explain why, but he is sure that the objec- 
tive faith is greater and higher than the explana- 
tion of it. So it is with schools of thought in the 
Church. The faith itself is greater than the thought 
of the particular school — the implicit faith, to speak 
scholastically, is more full and profound than the 
explicit faith. Now, the great defect in the theo- 
logical training of to-day, especially outside the 
Church, is that it is more given to a subjective analy- 
sis of thought about the Creed than to an objective 
study of the Creed itself ; and therefore, after read- 
ing much of that kind of writing, especially if it em- 
anates from Germany, the impression left is dreamy 
and unreal. We believe, if we are Christians, not 
in what Clement or Origen, or even Athanasius and 
Cyril, thought about God ; we believe in God. And 
the study of their thoughts is useful so far as it 
leads us to believe in God more firmly, and not 
otherwise; so far as it leads us to see that, under- 



1 66 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

lying all the differences of different schools of 
thought and modes of expression, there are the ob- 
jective truths of the faith once delivered to the 
saints. 

And yet schools of thought are inevitable in the 
Church ; and if they accept the whole Creed, and 
differ only in the perspective, so to speak, with 
which it groups itself about the special truth that is 
most vividly realized in particular circumstances, 
they are altogether beneficial, and help to the realiza- 
tion of the whole faith by the whole Church. Let 
me endeavor to illustrate again from personal ex- 
perience. One man receives the whole Creed in its 
integrity, but the special truth in it which appeals 
most strongly to his Christian consciousness is the 
Fatherhood of God. He groups the whole Creed 
around that truth, and thus develops a particular 
school of thought. Another apprehends as the cen- 
tral truth of the Creed for him — as the truth which 
meets his personal conviction of sin — the doctrine 
of the Atonement ; around that, then, he groups 
the whole Creed, and develops another school of 
thought. A third apprehends, as the vital truth in 
his experience, the ever-present grace of God's Holy 
Spirit ; that furnishes the stand-point for a third 
school of thought. A fourth takes his stand upon 
the Incarnation and the Sacraments, grouping the 
whole Creed around these truths, as those which are 
realized most intently in his experience, and so 
there is formed a fourth school of thought. Now, all 



THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 1 6/ 

these are real schools of Christian thought ; and 
they may coexist in the Church in entire harmony, 
because the Church's faith includes the central prin- 
ciples of them all ; and the more truly Catholic the 
Church is, the more harmoniously they will coexist 
in its bosom. 

But it must be evident, from this illustration, that 
the Catholicity of any of these schools of thought 
rests in the mutual communion of them all with one 
another in the unity of the Church. The most 
Catholic-minded Christian will be he — if there be 
one large-minded enough — who can realize in his 
own experience, with equal force and vividness, the 
central truth of each and all these separate schools ; 
because they are all founded on vital truths of the 
Creed itself. Now, the influence of unity in the one 
communion is to produce this result — to supplement 
the one-sidedness of the particular development by 
the comprehensive catholicity which results from 
the harmony of all. The history of the General 
Councils is the grand illustration of this power. 
But if the school of thought is not content with 
thus apprehending the Creed, as related to its own 
experience, but denies the point of view of other 
schools, and endeavors to cramp all Christian ex- 
perience to its own narrow measure, then it ceases 
to be a school, and becomes a party ; and though 
the school is beneficial, the party is altogether hurt- 
ful. No matter what its foundation, it is narrow 
and schismatical in temper, unjust in its judgments, 



l68 THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA, 

uncatholic in its methods, and incapable of a real 
advance in the knowledge of the things of God. 
What then must be the result, when the party be- 
comes a sect^ splits off from the communion of the 
Church, and gathers to itself only those who are 
like-minded, but to stereotype its narrowness, to 
ossify its heart, and to fossilize its brain. 

The condition of rising to the height and expand- 
ing to the fulness of Christian truth is to be in liv- 
ing, sympathetic ■ communion with the whole 
Church of all ages, that which is semper^ ubiqiie et ab 
omnibus ; within whose organization. One, Holy, 
Catholic and Apostolic, all differences are mini- 
mized, all truths are harmonized, and all the mem- 
bers have full scope for the exercise of their various 
gifts in communion with each other, and in loyal 
fidelity to the Head ; who provided for this in the 
institution of His Church, when " He gave some, 
apostles ; and some, prophets ; and some, pastors 
and teachers ; for the perfecting of the saints, for 
the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the 
body of Christ ; till we all come, in the unity of the 
faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, un- 
to a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of 
the fulness of Christ." 



Zbc Cburcb of IRome in ber IRelation 
to Cbrietian Trinity. 



LECTURE V. 

THE RIGHT REV. GEO. F. SEYMOUR, S.T.D., LL.D., 

Bishop of Springfield. 

THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER RE- 
LATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 

PREFACE. 

A FEW words are necessary to put the reader in 
possession of facts which he ought to know, in jus- 
tice as well to the writer as to himself. 

The Church Club of New York honored the lec- 
turer with an invitation to deliver an Address on 
the subject of " The Papacy in its Relation to 
Christian Unity." He accepted, and intended to 
write out in full what he had to say, but the press 
of work in his diocese, and other duties, prevented. 
Accordingly he was obliged to address his audi- 
ence, on the 8th of May last, without a single note. 
When the lecture was ended, the lecturer supposed 
that his work was done. But he was doomed to 
disappointment. The Club desired to print the 
Lectures, and would not consent to omit the one on 
Rome, hence the unhappy lecturer was forced to re- 



1/2 THE CHURCH OF ROME. 

produce on paper what he had some days before — 
two full weeks — uttered by word of mouth. The 
only time he could command for this purpose was 
while crossing the Atlantic on the steamer ; since, 
immediately on reaching Europe, other engage- 
ments claimed him, without interruption, until his 
return, in the autumn, to America. 

Under the above circumstances the Lecture has 
been prepared for publication — away from books, 
on the bosom of the deep. The lecturer does not 
seek to deprecate criticism, but he would suggest to 
those who are disposed to be censorious, that it 
might be worth their while first to try their hand at 
preparing an historic lecture without a single book 
of reference, and with the accompaniment of ocean 
waves, a rolling steamer, and friends and neighbors 
on all sides prostrate with sea-sickness. The writer 
has tried to present the substance of what he said 
on the evening of the 8th of May, 1888, in Christ 
Church, New York City, and he trusts that his 
memory has been true in the facts and dates which 
he has set down under its instruction. About his 
argument he feels no doubt whatsoever. 

G. F. S. 

Steamer "Germanic," at Sea, 
June I, 1888. 



LECTURE. 

There is no name with which a student of the 
past can conjure more successfully than with that of 
Rome. Whether he proposes to deal with secular 
or ecclesiastical history the word is equally potent. 
It represents what fills a larger sphere in either field 
of research than any other. There are cities which 
perchance can challenge comparison with Rome in 
the one or the other of these departments of history 
alone, but there is none which can approach her in 
both. 

When one utters the magic name, " Rome," he 
throws a spell upon memory. The past gives up its 
treasures. A panorama passes before the mind, 
which reproduces a period of nearly three thousand 
years, and illustrates the fortunes of mankind, as 
they grow and advance and reach down from cen- 
tury to century, and come at length to us, who are 
living here to-day, in speech, and customs, and laws, 
and institutions, and religion, and with some in 
superstitions. The contemplation of this double 
life of Rome, her secular and ecclesiastical history, 
places us abreast of our subject, assigned us by the 
Church Club of New York, to discuss in your pres- 



1/4 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

ence to-night, " The Relation of the Papacy to the 
Recovery of Christian Unity.'' 

We cannot meet this question without taking into 
view the career of Rome antecedent to the birth of 
Christ, and her relative position among the nations 
of the earth at the day of Pentecost ; since, as we 
shall presently see, these facts constitute the sug- 
gestion, we may say the inspiration of Papal aggran- 
dizement and usurpation as embodied now in the 
polity administered by Leo XIII. 

It is interesting in the highest degree, as an ab- 
stract study, to note the origin of Rome in the 
smallest of small beginnings, with the fortunes of 
the Twins, and to trace its progress through the 
mist of fable and legend until we emerge at length 
in company with a State which has already attained 
respectable proportions in territory and population, 
and developed the principles which are destined to 
contribute in a larger degree than anything else to its 
almost uninterrupted success on the lines of growth, 
consolidation, and conquest. The Roman, we dis- 
cover, was born to obey as well as to rule, and hence 
the individual imparts to the national life his own 
characteristics, and builds up institutions, civil and 
military, which embody pre-eminently the ideas of or- 
der, law, discipline, subordination, and organization. 

Were we to place before the eye a series of maps, 
representing the world of the ancients from the 
eighth century before Christ, century by century, 
down to the date of our Saviour's birth, we would 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 1/5 

see the City of the Seven Hills, as map replaced 
map, enlarging its domain, gradually at first, then 
by rapid strides, advancing steadily, grasping, and 
holding as it grasped, province after province, king- 
dom after kingdom, nation after nation, until the 
map which closed the series, and spread before our 
astonished gaze the earth as it existed politically 
when Jesus dwelt among us in the flesh, would show 
us the entire circle of civilized peoples tributary to 
Rome. Her arm on the right had swept to the 
North and the East and the South, and brought the 
countries which Alexander had conquered beneath 
her sway; her arm on the left had rested upon 
Gaul, Southern Germany, Hispania, and more dis- 
tant Britain, and reaching down beyond the Pillars 
of Hercules and the Mediterranean Sea, had laid 
hold of Mauritania and Numidia, and joined the 
conquests which she had made in the East and 
the South to those which she had achieved in the 
North and the West. The little speck, not larger 
apparently than a man's hand, on the banks of the 
Tiber in the eighth century before the Christian 
era, had grown through the intervening ages until 
it covered the whole face of the earth when Augus- 
tus reigned. The period of the kings, the local con- 
flicts with surrounding tribes, the invasion of the 
Gauls, the Samnlte and Punic wars, the wars of 
Jugurtha and Pompey and Caesar, will serve as in- 
dices to mark her advance and help us to chronicle 
the progress of Rome toward universal empire. 



176 THE CHURCH OF ROME IiV HER 

The earth has never seen such an empire before or 
since, and doubtless never will again. Relatively 
to the population then living it was immeasurably 
the greatest. In point of territory it filled the 
whole orbis terrarum of civilized mankind, and 
went beyond, and exacted submission from barba- 
rous tribes which occupied the border lands between 
light and darkness, the races which we know, and 
the fabulous creatures which legend presents as 
dwelling in the extremities of the world. It was 
not alone, nor chiefly the population, nor the terri- 
tory of the Roman Empire which made her great, 
but her organization, her unity. Rome, the City, 
summed up the Empire ; she was the heart, the 
soul of the huge domain ; she was the centre, from 
her radiated all power, and all looked to her for pro- 
tection. She sealed her conquests, at her discretion, 
with the signet ring of her franchise, and Asiatic 
and African, as well as European, became Roman 
citizens. The title was no empty name, witness the 
invective of Cicero, note the appeal of Saul of Tar- 
sus in the prison at Philippi. Rome unified the 
world as she strode out and on from Italy in the 
march of victory; she made her tributaries, in a 
sense more than nominal, " Romans They re- 
ceived the impress of her spirit and institutions, and 
in return they made their contribution to enhance 
her greatness. She was the mistress of the world, 
and Avas acknowledged as such from the Indus to 
the Atlantic Ocean. 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 1 7/ 

There were great cities before Rome, there have 
been great cities since ; there are great, no doubt 
greater cities now, but Rome at the time the Church 
of Christ was begotten by the Holy Ghost on the 
day of Pentecost was unparalleled and unapproach- 
able in its greatness. It was the first city of the 
world in every department of human endeavor, and 
in every element of material greatness. Other cities 
have excelled in population, in commerce, in arts, 
in manufactures, in finance, in worldliness, and, we 
may add, in wickedness and sin ; in some one or 
more of these characteristics individual cities, which 
can be named, have ranked first, or are now ac- 
counted pre-eminent. Rome at the time of w^hich 
we speak was facile princeps in all. She was the 
seat of universal empire, her armies were in all the 
world, along her Via Sacra marched triumphal pro- 
cessions, which displayed trophies and captives from 
every clime. No census tells the exact number of 
people who dwelt in her houses and occupied her 
suburbs, but the ruins, which lie around, and stretch 
away for many miles from the Forum and the Capi- 
tol, proclaim a population of at least a million. 
Her shops, her busy streets, the noise and din of 
many crafts exhibit her industries and tell of the 
activity and volume of her trade and commerce. 
The elegancies of life were there in all their super- 
fluity, luxuries which minister to the senses, and 
delights which gratify the taste and ravish the im- 
agination. And there, too, the world, in the dark- 

12 



178 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

est phases of its rebellion against God, and light and 
truth and morals, stood forth in gigantic propor- 
tions, regardless of shame and defying restraint. 
Rome was indeed what her own sad, desponding 
historian describes her as being, the " cloaca max- 
imaP the mighty sewer into which the wickedness 
of the whole world was poured. 

Let us look off from Rome on another scene. 
The place is a hill, not the Mons Palatinus, but the 
Mount of Ascension, and the figures on whom we 
gaze are not Romulus and his followers, but the 
King of Kings and His Apostles. The occasion is 
not the founding of an earthly city, but the setting 
up of the heavenly kingdom. Our Lord, in the su- 
preme moment of His sojourn among men, as His 
final act, with His last words, is giving to His disci- 
ples the plenary charter of their ministry, and pre- 
scribing the fundamental and essential principles of 
the constitution of His Church. The fourth great 
empire, as sketched by the Prophet Daniel, has now 
reached the zenith of its power, and the fifth, the 
final kingdom, against which the gates of hell 
shall not prevail, is coming to its birth. The King 
in disguise, for the infinite God is hidden beneath 
the form of the Son of Man — the King in disguise 
is taking order for the government and administra- 
tion of His kingdom by deputation, until He shall 
come again in the same nature, but no longer dis- 
guised, at the end of the world. Nothing can be 
more sublimely awful than the quiet and seclusion 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 1/9 

and majesty of our Lord's preparation for the birth 
of His Church. Were it not for the revelation of 
the Blessed Spirit we would know nothing of those 
momentous occurrences and words on which de- 
pended the organism and character of the kingdom 
of God on earth. Hence the tremendous signifi- 
cance of the disclosure made in the closing verses 
of S. Matthew's Gospel. It gathers, as it were, 
into a focus, all that had gone before of Christ's 
commands to His disciples, as touching their office, 
and it adds, besides, the basis of the authority on 
which they were to rest in the discharge of duty, 
further powers filling out the entire sphere of dele- 
gated administration which they were to exercise 
until His return, and the limitations under which 
they were to act and work. Remember, for we 
cannot emphasize too strongly the facts upon which 
we are now dwelling, they are crucial in any discus- 
sion of the polity of the Christian Church, they en- 
ter as a question antecedent to all others in any 
thought of Christian unity which embraces the Pa- 
triarchate of Rome as a party. The Holy Ghost 
admits us to the seclusion of our Lord's final inter- 
view with His Apostles ere He steps and passes 
from earth to heaven ; He allows us to share in 
hearing His last words spoken in this world to the 
Eleven, before He seats Himself upon His mediator- 
ial throne in the sky. This fact is of transcendent 
importance. It takes us into partnership with the 
Apostles, and makes us privy to the principles upon 



l80 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN" HER 

which they were to build and administer the Church, 
which was soon to come into existence. 

Our Lord, we note, " leads His Apostles out as 
far as to Bethany." As he had originally chosen 
them and appointed them their place, and reminded 
them from time to time that they were called with 
a vocation, and were acting under direction, as when 
He said, '' I appoint unto you a kingdom," or again, 
" Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, 
and ordained you, that ye should go and bring 
forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain," so 
now at the end, " He leads them out," separates 
them from the rest of men, and orders them, as He 
would have them, each in his place, and sets them 
before His face, that He may look at them and ad- 
dress them. The circumstance that " He led them 
out," the circumstance that He regulated their posi- 
tion ere He delivered to them His final commis- 
sion. His last commands, adds weight, if anything 
could, to His words ; helps to interpret, if anything 
were needed to make more plain, the meaning of 
His behest. The Holy Spirit paints for us the 
scene. He rehearses for us the words. What we 
see, and what we hear, harmonize, produce one im- 
pression, and that the deepest which could be made. 
And this, we are bold to say, is the purpose of the 
Holy Ghost. He aims to protect with all the safe- 
guards which divine foresight could provide, the 
polity of His Church. Inspiration, it would seem, 
could do no more than to bring mankind as specta- 



RELATION- TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. l8l 

tors and witnesses of the giving of the charter, the 
drafting of the constitution of Christ's Kingdom on 
earth. Inspiration, it would seem, could do no more 
than to lead us along through the first years of the 
Church's life with her, as she grows and develops 
and spreads abroad, and show us how the Apostles, 
who saw and heard their Lord, understood Him 
and executed His commands. We see the group- 
ing, we read the charter, and we are permitted to 
learn the manner in which the original ofificers ap- 
pointed under that charter by Jesus Christ Himself 
interpreted its meaning and carried out its provis- 
ions. The final verses of S. Matthew's Gospel give 
us the charter, the Acts of the Holy Apostles ex- 
hibit for five-and-twenty years the practical admin- 
istration of government under that charter by those 
to whom the Sovereign Himself gave it. Could we 
ask for further information to make us certain as to 
the character of the polity of the Church ? Are we 
at a loss to answer whether the King committed the 
administration of His Kingdom to a single vice- 
gerent^ or to a corporation ; whether he organized 
its government on earth as an oligarchy tmder Him^ 
or an absolute monarchy on a level with Him ? On 
this point there can be no doubt at all if we accept 
the testimony of Holy Scripture ; not the evidence 
of a single verse, or the inference gathered from iso- 
lated texts, but the very charter itself, given by our 
Lord Himself in His very words, and the practical 
interpretation put upon that charter by all of those 



1 82 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

who first received office under it, without exception, 
to the end of their lives, in the organization of the 
churches which they planted, and the teaching 
which they gave to their followers. No answer but 
one has ever been given dogmatically to the ques- 
tion — in whom did our Lord lodge the government 
of His Church, in one or several ; did He vest its 
offices and functions and powers in a single vicar, or 
in a corporation ? No answer save one has ever 
been given as a matter of faith by any branch of the 
Church, until the Patriarchate of Rome, in the year 
of grace 1870, in the dogma of infallibility, presumed 
to affirm and require all who owned her obedience 
to accept as de fide that Christ constituted His 
Church an absolute monarchy, that he appointed S. 
Peter His vicar, raising him above his fellows into 
an order by himself, and lodged in him and his suc- 
cessors all power for government and administra- 
tion. 

It is true that from an early period the ideas of 
centralization, unification, and supremacy began to 
take shape and form in the mind of the West, and 
Rome of course naturally lent itself to give expres- 
sion to these ideas, and translate them, as it was 
most plausibly believed and maintained, for the 
benefit of mankind, into a blessed reality. The 
process was very gradual, and in its course of on- 
ward progress and development it had its perturba- 
tions and recessions; but still, on the whole, the 
growing power advanced, and making use of what 



RELATION- TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 1 83 

it had obtained by concession, by tentative claim, 
by haughty demand, as a foothold, it leaped to 
loftier pretensions, and then made good by persist- 
ent assertion, in the face of ignorance and incapacity 
to obtain the requisite information for refutation, its 
extravagant demands upon the obedience of man- 
kind. We can readily trace the advance of Victor 
beyond Soter, of Julius beyond Victor, of Leo the 
Great beyond Julius, of Gregory the Great beyond 
Leo the Great, of Gregory IL and IIL beyond their 
illustrious predecessor, of the seventh Gregory be- 
yond all that had gone before him, of Innocent IIL 
in advance of Gregory, of Boniface VIII. still further 
on in the career of self-assertion and unfounded 
claim. Still, while the Patriarch of Rome is thus 
practically, in the minds and before the eyes of 
men, growing away from all other bishops, and lift- 
ing his head above his fellows, and crowning himself 
with a triple crown, he does not impose the system 
upon the world as a Divine institution to be ac- 
cepted, as a matter of faith, under the penalty of 
excommunication. Centuries drift on, and it is re- 
served for our time and the present generation to 
see this result reached. In 1870 the decree of in- 
fallibility was formulated and proclaimed as an 
article of- faith by Pius IX. From that hour and 
henceforth the Patriarchate of Rome becomes re- 
sponsible for revolutionizing the policy of the Chris- 
tian Church as established by Christ, and admin- 
istered by Plis Apostles and their colleagues and 



1 84 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

successors. This is an awful charge to make, and no 
one should presume to present such an indictment 
unless he has at his command ample proof to sus- 
tain it. Fortunately, in good measure, our duty on 
this line is already discharged before we formulate 
and make our assertion. 

It only remains that we should bring together 
and contrast the two systems — namely, firsts the 
polity revealed by S. Matthew in recording the acts 
and words of our Blessed Lord, and by S. Luke in 
narrating the history of the administration of the 
Church by His Apostles ; and, secondly, the polity as 
now received and imposed by the Church of Rome. 
The one is a government entrusted to a corporation, 
the other is an absolute monarchy ruled by one ; the 
former is limited by a prescribed charter with terms 
and conditions, the latter supersedes all charters 
human and divine, and stands on its own naked au- 
thority without condition or limit. The first lodges 
all ministerial power and of^cial grace in the hands 
of eleven, who are to act in co-ordination, in mutual 
dependence upon each other ; the second makes a 
single man the reservoir of all God's spiritual gifts 
to the Church, and the sole dispenser of ofificial dig- 
nity and sacramental blessing. Let us look on the 
two pictures, the one of Christ and His Apostles, 
photographed for us by the light of the Holy Spir- 
it ; the other of the Pope and his cardinals, present 
before our eyes to-day, as falling within the sphere 
of our own personal knowledge and experience. 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 1 85 

Christ, after the resurrection, when the forty days 
had come to an end, when it was time for Him to 
ascend into Heaven, where He was before He be- 
came incarnate, but not as He was before, but now 
with our humanity vindicated from the curse of the 
law, purged from sin, and triumphant over death 
and the grave, indissolubly united to His divine 
Person — Christ, as He was thus about to leave this 
world, not to appear again until He shall come with 
power and great glory to judge the quick and the 
dead, makes final provision for the setting up His 
kingdom on earth and its continuance and adminis- 
tration during the interval until His return. His 
acts and words are supremely important ; of course 
they always are, but a distinction may be taken, and 
some in the very nature of the words and acts them- 
selves are of greater gravity and weight than others. 
If we allow this difference, and without the least ap- 
proach to irreverence practically we must, among 
the most solemn things which Jesus ever did and 
said are those which immediately precede His as- 
cension. They are His last acts. His last words. 
The Holy Ghost summons all the world through S. 
Matthew and S. Luke to behold and listen. What 
do we see and hear ? Jesus leads His Apostles out, 
not one but all, as far as to Bethany. There, in the 
midst of them, He makes known to them His will 
touching them and their relation to Him, and under 
Him to His kingdom the Church. The words are 
few, but they are pregnant with meaning, and settle 



1 86 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

for ever decisively and irrevocably the principles of 
the government of His Church throughout all time. 
" He led them out as far as to Bethany" (S. Luke 
xxiv. 20). "And Jesus came and spake unto them, 
saying, All power is given unto Me in heaven and 
in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of 
the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them 
to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded 
you ; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the 
end of the world " (S. Matt, xxviii. 18-20). Here 
we see and hear, as the deliberate will of our risen 
Lord, that He entrusts His kingdom to a corpora- 
tion. He plans to do so, He leads them. He draws 
near to them, and addresses them collectively. 
These acts are the deliberate expression of His will, 
they show His settled purpose and design. Then 
His words are in harmony with His acts. He 
speaks to them as a body, He uses \h.Q plural num,' 
ber, " Go ye," " baptize ye," " teach ye," " lo, I am 
with you " (plural). When He willed He could se- 
lect, and separate, and speak to one, and pass by the 
rest. Jesus could draw S. John to His side; He 
could single out S. Thomas and address him by 
name ; He could challenge S. Peter three times in the 
presence of his fellow-disciples with the question, 
" Lovest thou Me more than these ?" He could as 
well, had He so willed, have addressed His plenary 
commission of government and administration on the 
Mount of Ascension to S. Peter, but He did not do 



relation: to christian' uxity. 187 

so, although S. Peter was there. He delivered the 
charter on the contrary, containing all the powers 
and all the limitations, to all the Apostles together, 

including S. Peter, as a body, to have and to hold 
the trust in c::"nn::n in co-ordination. It is indeed 
the plenar}- c: rnrnission, since our Lord provides 
for all men and iir all time and for the entire 
spheres of teaching and duty. He assigns them 
their jurisdiction : ••'All nations."' He forecasts the 
duration of their m.inistrv : '• Lo, I am with you 
ahvay, even unto the end of the world."' He pre- 
scribes the subject-matter of their instruction : 
" Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever 
I have com.m.anded }-ou.'' He imposes limitations ; 
He restrains them: by associating them together and 
making them mutually dependent upon each other, 
so that no one should go beyond and defraud his 
brethren by self-assertion and self-will, but all 
should act in co-ordination and in subjection to 
His sovereign will. They are to teach and enjoin 
obedience, but the delegated power is conditioned 
by the provis;-. •• whatsoever I have com.m.anded 
you." 

When v.-e pass from the Mount of Ascension to 
the day of Pentecost and the first years of the 
Church"s life, we are permitted by the Blessed Spirit 
to study the administration of the Apostles, acting 
under the charter which, as we have just seen, they 
received as a Joint commission from their Lord. 
Their understanding of their Divine Masters vrords 



1 88 THE CHURCH OF ROME IKT HER 

as expressed by their teaching and the execution of 
their trust must be, it would seem to us, decisive of 
the polity of Christ's Church, and the more emphat- 
ically so, because we have in their conduct in these 
regards not alone the consensus of a body of devout, 
intelligent men, but the united and unanimous wit- 
ness of a body of such men inspired by the Blessed 
Spirit. Could anything be stronger than such an 
attestation of the character of the polity of Christ's 
Church being in accordance with His will : it will 
suffice for our purpose to look at the front ranks of 
the Christian army, those who were enrolled and 
were drilled by the Apostles themselves and their 
associates. These surely must be right as regards 
all the essentials of faith and practice. If these, the 
first-fruits of the Spirit^ marching under the orders 
and the eyes of the Twelve, are radically and funda- 
mentally in error, we confess that we lose hope, and 
surrender in despair. The Holy Ghost casts the 
bright beams of His illumination upon the very first 
believers, and brings them out from the oblivion of 
the past, and sets them before us that we may look 
.^t them and take them for our examples. The de- 
scription is vivid, comprehensive, and decisive as 
touching the polity of the Church while these men 
lived and when they died, and many of them, most 
pf them, sealed their testimony of their love and 
obedience with their blood. The record of these, 
the very first believers^ set down in Holy Scripture 
is, "they continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doc- 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY, 1 89 

trine and fellowship, and In breaking of bread and 
in prayers " (Acts ii. 42). 

These believers, three thousand in number, rep- 
resent the mind and teaching of S. Peter and his 
associates. They tell us by their steadfast behav- 
ior, more plainly than words could do so, what 
their teachers, and what they, as taught, understood 
the polity of Christ's Church to be — precisely what 
our Lord prescribed, a government taking oversight 
of faith and practice, of teaching and sacraments 
and devotion, vested in a corporation ; for it is de- 
clared by the Blessed Spirit that these first Christ- 
ians continued steadfastly in the Apostles', not S. 
Peter's doctrine and fellowship, " and in breaking of 
bread and in prayers." We have before us, placed 
there by the Holy Ghost, the charter of Christ's 
Church in His own precious words ; we have the 
first officers appointed under the provisions of that 
charter by the Divine Master in person, and we have 
those officers in the actual administration of their 
trust, under the guidance of the Blessed Spirit, 
preaching, teaching, baptizing, confirming, celebrat- 
ing the Holy Eucharist, exercising discipline, ordain- 
ing, and governing in Christ's name ; and the polity, 
the form of government as set down in our Lord's 
own words, as understood and accepted and admin- 
istered by those who heard those words, and who 
were guided into all truth by the Holy Ghost, and 
as received and steadfastly obeyed by those who 
were so taught by the Apostles and their associates, 



I90 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

is a corporate government^ vested in a body of inen, 
eleven at first, then twelve, and then multiplying 
along the line of the same order, the highest in the 
sacred ministry, until the needs of all nations were 
supplied and continuing to the end of the world. 
This is clear if anything is clear, and can be made 
clear. 

The form of Church government which exists 
now in the Patriarchate of Rome as a matter of fact 
is an absolute monarchy, unlimited from beneath, and 
scarcely, if at all, limited from above. The Bishop 
of Rome in the theory of the Vatican decrees, which 
supersede the charter of Christ, is more autocratic 
than any earthly monarch has ever been, or in the 
nature of things can be. He is above all, he rules 
all, and is ruled by none. In his solitary grandeur 
he sits above all who reign and govern in this world 
on his lonely throne, and when he speaks as Pope 
in the sphere of faith and morals his voice is the in- 
fallible voice of God. His jurisdiction reaches from 
pole to pole, it embraces all lands, and all the islands 
of the sea. He has, and can have, no colleague, no 
companion. His powers are incommunicable, save 
to a successor, and a successor can only appear after 
he is dead. He is an order by himself, and his ex- 
altation sinks the apostolate out of the place which 
Christ gave it into a grade of the priesthood. This 
is the polity of the Patriarchate of Rome as for- 
mulated and imposed by the Vatican Council of 
1870. 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. I9I 

As we look on Christ's charter and then on this 
scheme of government, we are forced to the conclu- 
sion that they are irreconcilable absolutely and hope- 
lessly. There have been, sometime and somewhere, 
usurpation, subversion, and revolution. The Vati- 
can form of Church polity is not a product of Christ's 
charter. It is a perversion of it, a radical and fund- 
amental change, involving a rooting up of principles 
and the substitution of other and essentially differ- 
ent principles. For example, Christ made His 
Church catholic, the Twelve, as the Revelation of 
S. John informs us, look, three to the north, three 
to the south, three to the east, and three to the 
west; they form a hollow square, and face the four 
quarters of the earth, the entire circle of humanity, 
and to these, not to one, but to all, the risen Lord 
gave commission, on an equality, that they might go 
forward and convert the nations and draw them to 
look up to the King over all in heaven, the incar- 
nate Lord on His throne, the Sun of Righteousness 
who shines for all. Rome destroys catholicity, and 
makes the Church local, Roman, as God made His 
ancient Church national, Jewish, God's purpose 
was, as revealed by the prophets, out of the shell of 
Judaism, local, national, narrow, to produce the 
tree which should cover the whole earth, the Christ- 
ian Church, catholic, universal, for all lands, for all 
peoples, stamped with the impress of no one to the 
exclusion of the others, but equally the property of 
all, appropriated by each, and yet at home every- 



192 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

where, just as the sun in the sky shines for all, be- 
longs to all, without invading the proprietorship of 
each in him as a private possession, so that men 
say, without prejudice to the rights and claims of 
others, an American sun, an English sun, an Italian 
sun, a tropical sun, an Arctic sun. Thus by Christ's 
charter and constitution the Church is catholic, 
equally at home in all lands, and yet the exclusive 
possession of none : the Oriental Catholic Church 
for the Orient, the Occidental Catholic Church for 
the Occident, the Roman Catholic Church for Italy, 
the Anglo-Catholic Church for England, the Cana- 
dian Catholic Church for Canada, and the American 
Catholic Church for the United States ; but at the 
same time there are not a plurality of Catholic 
Churches, for that would be an absurdity, but one 
Catholic Church, even as there are not many suns, 
but one sun. Rome by her present scheme of Church 
government repudiates catholicity, and brings back 
the local and narrow polity of Judaism. She re- 
places Palestine with Italy, Jerusalem with Rome, 
the Temple with the Vatican, and the High Priest 
with Pontifex Maximus, the Pope. As the ancient 
Jew was obliged, like Daniel, when he prayed in 
Babylon with his windows open toward Jerusalem, 
to look to the Temple on Mount Zion for God's 
presence and favor, so the subject of Papal obedi- 
ence, be he where he may on the earth's surface, 
must look to the Pope in the Vatican for his priest- 
hood and his sacraments. The local episcopate in 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 1 93 

every land is simply the creation of the Bishop of 
Rome, his representative and his agent ; all churches 
the wide world over in communion with the Pope 
are simply colonies of Rome, absolutely dependent 
upon her for officers and laws and absolution and 
benediction. Under her government the earth is 
unified from an earthly centre, not a heavenly, and 
the whole world is ruled by a worldly sovereign, 
seated on a local throne. The organization is grand, 
comprehensive, and unique, but it is not the system 
arranged by Christ, and worked out by the Apostles 
and their associates under the direction of the Holy 
Ghost. It is inconsistent with Scripture, irreconcil- 
able with history, and repugnant to catholicity. 

The inquiry is spontaneous, and, we are willing 
to allow, may be justly pressed upon our attention 
and claim from us a reply. How do you account 
for the phenomenon, if its origin be not of God ? 
Can you on any other theory explain the rise and 
growth of the Papal power, if you refuse to admit 
that it is Divine ? We answer that we can to our 
own satisfaction trace its development to human 
causes, which adequately and completely solve the 
difficulty. We proceed at once to catalogue and 
discuss the elements which enter into the complex 
problem, premising the remark that, even supposing 
we were not able to account for the Papal power, as 
it confronts us to-day, as a mere human growth, the 
alternative would not be that it must needs then be 
Divine ; it is possible, nay, highly probable, that we 
13 



194 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

are not properly qualified for the task, and, in the 
first place, have not brought forth all the causes 
which have been active in history in producing this 
result, and, in the second place, we have not done 
justice to those which we have adduced. 

First, then, and before all other causes which 
have contributed to produce the Papal Power, is the 
city where it has its home. Rome, the ancient city, 
the seat of universal empire, the mistress of the na- 
tions, was the suggestion and the inspiration of 
what we call Romanism. This wonderful city em- 
bodied and kept before the minds of men ideas 
which are in their essence eternal truths, and 
which are imposing, grand, and fascinating — ideas 
which, when once grasped, cannot be dismissed ; 
these ideas are unity through universal empire, cen- 
tralization, organization, and obedience, passing in 
gradation from the lowest to the highest, from the 
many to the few, and from the few to the one, the 
universal monarch, the Caesar on his throne. See 
how these ideas kept their place in the sphere of 
politics during the Middle Ages ; note how they 
linger still. Even the names are not forgotten, and 
Roman Empire and Kaisar are still on men's lips as 
living words of the present. The Church founded 
in Rome by the Apostles inherited these ideas. 
They came perforce, without her will or choice, into 
her possession. They became a suggestion, they 
were even more, they were cherished as an inspira- 
tion. As soon as the Church of Rome emerged 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 19$ 

from the Catacombs, and was released from the 
blows of persecution, she found herself the first, the 
foremost Church of all her fellows. Thus she re- 
ceived from her city, whose growth and grandeur 
we have already sketched, the impulse which set 
her well on her way toward claiming more and 
more, as time went on, what came into her hands as 
men say " accidentally, in the natural course of 
events." A colossal city or diocese makes a colossal 
bishop. In one sense, as touching their office, all 
bishops are equal ; in another sense, as regards the 
material interests which they represent, bishops are 
unequal, and often very unequal. For instance, 
when you look at our office, the Bishop of New 
York and the Bishop who addresses you are on a 
level, the one can do as much and no more than 
the other, but there the equality ceases. The Bish- 
op of New York has behind him the mightiest city 
in wealth and population in the Western world; 
he represents in a sense these stupendous factors of 
material and worldly prowess, and his influence is 
correspondingly great. The other bishop represents 
poverty, weakness, sporadic elements of life few and 
far between, scattered over an immense territory. 
What comparison then is there between them on 
any plane where material interests are involved ? 
And, further than this, when you pass into any field 
of discussion, however far removed from the sphere 
of what is distinctly secular, what chance has the 
little bishop against the great ? Men do not care to 



196 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

oppose the mighty, those who can snub, and thwart, 
and possibly crush. They pay court to the great, 
and defer to them and wait upon their smile, and 
eagerly seek to anticipate their wish. And, then, so 
weak and naughty is the human heart, so easily is 
it puffed up with pride, that the occupants of these 
great sees often and quickly educate themselves to 
believe that they are really and intrinsically better 
than their fellows, that God has put a difference be- 
tween them and others. Such are the tendencies 
inherent in the facts. A colossal city makes a co- 
lossal bishop, and this principle reached its maxi- 
mum embodiment in Rome. The greatest City of 
the World made the greatest Bishop of the World. 
Even when the Empire was heathen the City lifted 
the Bishop so high that he drew to himself the un- 
welcome attention of the secular power, and in suc- 
cession, in consequence, as in no other see, the early 
Bishops of Rome were martyrs. When the Empire 
became Christian, Rome's place was recognized as 
first, and the principle on which that primacy rested 
was clearly and accurately defined when the Second 
General Council, acting on this principle, assigned 
to the new seat of empire, Constantinople, the sec- 
ond place; it was the principle, namely, of honor ^ 
based upon material greatness. That this principle 
of graduation was speedily obscured and lost sight 
of is true, but still it maintained its hold upon the 
legislation of the Church through what we may call 
the conciliar period, and finds expression in the 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 19/ 

closing enactments of Chalcedon. Indeed, the prin- 
ciple of the primacy^ as distinguished from tJie sit- 
prei7tacy growing out of Petrine claims, was the heart 
and soul of Gallicanism in contrast to Ultramontan- 
ism, and was crushed out even in the Roman com- 
munion not twenty years ago. The mighty prestige 
of the City of Rome, her material greatness, as by 
far in advance of all others the first in the world, 
set her bishop equally far ahead of all competitors, 
and then, added to this material base from which 
his superiority rose, there floated round him hazy 
clouds of tradition which coupled his secular prim- 
acy of place with the spiritual claims of association 
with the Prince of the Apostles, as being the suc- 
cessor of S. Peter. And thus fact and fancy helped 
to inspire Rome almost from the outset with the 
ideas of primacy, grounded on more than the acci- 
dent of place, and domination, resting on stronger 
claims than those afforded by secular power. 

In the second place, Rome was an apostolic see^ 
and this honor gave her an immense advantage in 
weight and influence in the mind of the primitive 
and early Church. An apostolic see is one that 
was founded by an Apostle, and its value consisted 
in the fact that its history went back to the Twelve, 
to those who had been with our Lord. It will at 
once be seen that in any discussion touching doc- 
trine it was a matter of great importance to have ac- 
cess to a stream which flowed from an apostolic 
fountain, whose waters came down from S. Peter, 



198 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

or S. John, or S. Paul, or S. James. The succes- 
sion of bishops was adduced in ancient times, not 
for the purpose of establishing the continuity of of- 
fice, about that there was no question in those days, 
but with a view to establish the continuity of doc- 
trine, to show that the alleged truth had been held 
without interruption, back and back by each bishop 
as he entered upon his office, for he then made a 
solemn profession of his faith, until the origin of the 
see was reached. The value of this witness would 
be in proportion to its antiquity, to the nearness of 
its approach to apostolic times, and it would rise to 
the maximum of weight, the utmost limit of influ- 
ence, when it was an apostolic see, a bishopric founded 
by an Apostle in person. Rome's pre-eminence in 
this particular consisted not alone in the fact that it 
was an apostolic see, but still further in the addition- 
al fact that it enjoyed a inonopoly of this distinction 
in the West. There were many apostolical sees in 
the East — Jerusalem, Antioch, Caesarea, Ephesus, for 
example ; there was only 07ie of undoubted apostoli- 
cal origin in the West, and that was Rome. This 
proud pre-eminence helped to fill men's minds with 
awe and reverence. It added immensely to her au- 
thority, and reacted upon her to impress her with 
exalted ideas of her own majesty and greatness. 

Closely associated with the fact that Rome was 
an apostolic see, the apostolic see of the West, was 
the additional fact that, in the controversies which 
for three centuries raged around the Person and the 



KELATIO.V TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 1 99 

Natures of our Lord, and the Divinity and Person 
of the Holy Spirit, Rome was uniformly and 
steadily in the right until we reach the age of 
Honorius and the question of the one or two wills 
in the incarnate Christ. Meanwhile, the other 
patriarchates fell into heresy, first one, and then 
another, then two at once, then three, and then all 
four together ; but Rome maintained her integrity, 
and as time went on her moral influence grew with 
more than arithmetical progression. To be right 
once when others go wrong may be an accident, and 
this may be the explanation a second time ; but it 
will be hard to persuade men that it is still an acci- 
dent when a third, and fourth, and fifth time the 
right is still maintained by the same party, while all 
the others have been once or twice or thrice in error. 
Such was Rome's position among the patriarchates 
during the fourth, and fifth, and sixth, and part of 
the seventh centuries ; she v/as uniformly right, they 
were seldom right — often wrong. Mankind learned 
to rely upon her, and in the event felt sure that 
they would not be disappointed in their confidence. 
The apostolic see of the West strengthened the claim 
of her august antiquity by repeatedly uttering her 
voice, and uniformly on the side of right and truth, 
for hundreds of years. 

During these centuries, while Rome's power and 
prestige were steadily growing in the West the 
Northern barbarians were descending as waves of 
the sea upon Southern Europe, and sweeping all 



200 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

before them save what they chose to spare. In suc- 
cession came the Goth, and the Vandal, and the 
Hun, and spread over the fair territories of ancient 
civilization like devouring beasts of prey. The only 
power which challenged and awakened their respect 
and awe was Christianity, all else they cast down 
and destroyed ; the Church remained, and ultimately 
subdued her conquerors, and made their mightiest 
monarchs attend as lacqueys upon her Patriarchs, 
and hold their stirrups while they mounted their 
steeds, and walked beside them to advertise their 
submission to the spiritual power, to which they 
deemed it an honor to do menial service. When 
the barbarian, the element which was destined to 
shape and form the life and character and religion 
and manners of mediaeval Europe, came first in con- 
tact with Rome, she was well on her way toward 
those high pretensions and lofty claims with which 
we are familiar. The rude, rough warriors from the 
North had never known Rome before, they were 
not acquainted with her origin and early history. 
They accepted her as they found her, and received 
all that she taught them as undoubted truth, hence 
the new population of Southern Europe, when won 
over to Christianity, became unwittingly a mighty 
helper to push the see of Rome on and up in her 
progress toward supreme spiritual dominion over 
the nations of the earth. 

Legislation naturally followed in the wake of suc- 
cessful usurpation. The general drift of canonical 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 201 

enactment during the decade of centuries from 
Chalcedon was to aggrandize Rome as the centre 
and mistress of the West. Appellate jurisdiction, 
for instance, limited and conditioned, as a conces- 
sion to Pope Julius, by Sardica, in the middle of 
the fourth century, had become coercive jurisdiction 
without restraint in the days of Charlemagne. 
Everything lent itself to produce this result ; it was, 
as we would say, the sensible and wise thing to do. 
Rome possessed the apparatus which best qualified 
her for hearing and adjudging causes. Over and 
above her ecclesiastical exaltation and spiritual pres- 
tige as an apostolic see and the first of the Patri- 
archates, she drew to herself and kept in her service 
the best and ripest learning of the times ; hers were 
the archives and records of the past, stored up in 
greater profusion than elsewhere ; hers was the 
authority to provide all that was requisite for the 
hearing of causes, and hers was the power to carry 
out her decrees and execute her sentences when is- 
sued and pronounced. Thus there came gradually 
into her hands, largely by the force of circumstances, 
and largely through her own grasping ambition, 
chains, forged by Provincial Councils and National 
Assemblies, which bound and fastened the West in 
ecclesiastical and legal subjection to Rome. 

During this same period another fruitful cause was 
negatively operating to lift the Patriarchate of Rome 
high above all her competitors, and leave her in 
possession of the field as practically the head of 



202 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

Christendom and the foremost Church of all the 
world, in the East as well as the West. A tree in 
the midst of a forest does not appear conspicuously 
great, but when the woodman has felled the grove 
with his axe and left but a single oak, it rises in 
lonely grandeur from the plain, and stands forth a 
giant in its proportions and its height. So it was 
with Rome ; she left the period of the undisputed 
General Councils with four sister Patriarchates — 
Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusa- 
lem. These were sufficiently on a level with her to 
contest her supremacy and check her growing pre- 
tensions. But within a century from the close of 
the Sixth General Council, three of these rivals of 
Rome were prostrate beneath the heel of the Mos- 
lem power, and the fourth was threatened. The 
followers of Mohammed overran and subdued 
Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, and drew near to the 
coasts of the Euxine and the Bosphorus, and with 
haughty effrontery lit their camp-fires and deployed 
their forces within sight of the Eastern capital. In 
the ninth century Alexandria and Antioch and 
Jerusalem ceased to exist as appreciable factors in 
the make up of Christendom, and Constantinople 
alone remained to occupy the ground as a rival of 
Rome. But she was at great and signal disadvan- 
tage as compared with her venerable competitor. 
She was not an apostolic see, she had no claims to 
prefer as a counter-charm to the name of Peter. She 
was crippled by the secular power, which continued 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 203 

by her side until Constantinople fell beneath the 
Turkish power in 1453. The Emperor and the State 
overshadowed her, and infused into her the poison of 
Erastianism ; and meanwhile the Crescent went on 
increasing in conquests and nearness of approach to 
her, and at length, after centuries of imbecility, 
the city of Constantine became the capital of the 
Mohammedan Empire, and the Church of S. Chry- 
sostom was converted into the Mosque of Santa 
Sophia. Then Rome was left really alone, she had 
been virtually so since the rise and success of the 
religion of the False Prophet. It had been Rome's 
advantage, on the other hand, that the seat of Em- 
pire in the West had at an early period been with- 
drawn from its old and immemorial home on the 
Seven Hills, and transferred to Ravenna, and then 
to Aix-la-Chapelle, and then fell apart into several 
divisions, no more to reappear in reality, or even in 
name, in Italy. Thus the Papacy was left without 
a companion to carry on and illustrate the traditions 
of the venerable past, secular as well as sacred. She 
improved her opportunities grandly, and grew apace 
in assertion and pretension and claim, with no voice 
in all the world that had the power to make itself 
heard to say her, nay. 

Forgery and deception were employed to give 
the apparent support of antiquity to the ex- 
travagant claims of the Roman See in the ninth 
and tenth centuries. Alleged decretals of early 
Popes were imposed upon the credulity of an 



204 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

uncritical age as genuine documents, and doubtless 
honestly accepted and asserted as true even by Ro- 
man Bishops themselves. So far as the effect was 
concerned it is of no consequence whether the Popes 
were originally parties to the fraud or not. We are 
disposed, however, to acquit them of this immoral- 
ity, and are of the opinion that they were originally 
devised and put in circulation in the interests of di- 
ocesan bishops as a protection against the tyranny of 
their metropolitans. Rome, however, was only too 
eager to use the weapon placed at her disposal, and 
long after she knew that they were spurious she ap- 
pealed to them in quarters where she could safely 
do so to justify her claims. With the false decretals 
we must associate such forgeries as the Donation of 
Constantine, and wholesale corruptions of the early 
Fathers, as a fruitful cause for aggrandizing the Pa- 
pacy and persuading mankind to accept it as a Di- 
vine system rooted in the earliest Christian anti- 
quity. 

The development of the Papal power was in ac- 
cordance with the structure of society and the great 
institution of the Middle Ages, the feudal system. 
Then the spirit of the age was centripetal^ as, since 
the Reformation, it has been centrifugaL Then the 
forces of secular and religious life sought the centre, 
as now they fly away from restraint and control. 
Familiarity with subordination, reaching from the 
serf to the monarch and uniting many and diverse 
elements under one supreme head in the State, re- 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 20$ 

conclled, if it did not force men to desire a similar 
perfection of organization in the Church. The 
spirit of the age is a potent influence, and pene- 
trates and is felt everywhere. The spirit of central- 
ization was dominant in the olden time, as the net 
product of the civil and military structure and ge- 
nius of pagan Rome, and of their offspring the feu- 
dal system of the Middle Ages. Everything tended 
that way and drifted in that direction, as we have 
seen the operation of opposite forces driving man- 
kind asunder and producing an individualism so in- 
tense, that even those who have professed and called 
themselves Christians have held and taught that 
the zenith of human progress would be reached 
when every man was left free to do what was right 
in his own eyes. We must count, then, the spirit 
of the age as an important contributor to the growth 
and development of the Papal power. 

But over and above all the causes which we have 
noted as combining to account, on human grounds, 
for the marvellous phenomenon of Papal claims as 
displayed before our eyes in the Vatican, we must 
remember that good men and true all over the West 
deliberately did their utmost, by act and word and 
example and influence, during the Middle Ages to 
help on the development of the power of the Bishop 
of Rome. I compliment my hearers and readers 
when I say that I think so well of them that I am 
persuaded that, had they been living then, they 
would have done the same, as seeking to confer the 



206 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

greatest benefit in their power upon society. We 
are not all gifted with a foresight which enables us 
to look very far into the future, most of us can see 
only a little way, and hence we act, the majority of 
us, in reference to immediate results, or results not 
far removed from eye and operating cause. 

It is astonishing how little is known, even in 
these days, when knowledge is universal almost, and 
claimed by its votaries to be comprehensive and 
profound, how little is known of the Middle Ages. 
Men affect to contemn them ; they call them " dark," 
and rightly in a sense, for indeed they are usually 
very dark to those who are loudest in declaiming 
against them, as we have said. In order to do scant 
justice to this large tract of human history, which 
borders on our modern age and connects us with 
classical antiquity and the epoch of our Blessed 
Lord and His Apostles, let me ask you to look out 
upon Western Europe as it presented itself to the 
eye at the beginning of the sixth century. We look 
upon a barren waste, nay worse, we gaze upon the 
ruins of a world. The civilization which Pericles 
and Cicero knew is crushed beneath the violence 
and rapine of rude barbarians. Everything that is 
fair and beautiful seems sinking fast out of sight, 
and the future holds out no hope. We close our 
eyes in despair, and feel that all things must be 
overwhelmed in one universal cataclysm. We open 
them again, and Europe in the sixteenth century is 
spread beneath our gaze. The desert has become a 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 20/ 

cultivated and fruitful expanse, occupied by the na- 
tions which are now the dominant races of the earth. 
Christianity has its cathedrals, and churches, and 
hospitals, and asylums, and shelters for monks and 
nuns. Learning has its universities, and colleges, 
and schools, and libraries ; trade and commerce have 
their guilds and associations ; the useful industries 
have pushed themselves to the front, and made for 
themselves a place and a name to be known and re- 
spected ; cities fair and opulent dot the map from 
Ireland to the Indies ; finance has its centres, and is 
arranging and regulating its domain in preparation 
for the bank, and the bourse, and the exchange ; in 
a word, as we look out and around, we feel ourselves 
to be at home, we recognize our ancestors and their 
institutions public and private, and the interval 
though great is still within grasp between them- 
selves and us. 

When was this great change accomplished ? 
Why, during the very period which many at the 
present day seek to discount under the flippant de- 
scriptive epithet, " the Dark AgesT Who were the 
workers who wrestled with the stubborn wilderness, 
and the more stubborn natures of brutish men, and 
brought out of desolation fertility, out of barbarism 
civilization, out of anarchy civil institutions and set- 
tled government, out of chaos order and security to 
life and limb and property ? The very men whom 
the wiseacres of the nineteenth century, with their 
heads high in the air, as they strut and swagger with 



208 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

their little stock of superficial information picked up 
from newspapers and reviews and encyclopaedias, 
affect to disparage as poor benighted monks, ignor- 
ant ecclesiastics, and mediaeval drones. It would 
be an interesting spectacle to see such persons com- 
pelled to take their places in the witness-box and 
sustain an examination upon the period which they 
are not slow to proclaim that they pity and despise, 
and which, with a splendid irony of which they are 
entirely unconscious, they denominate " dark^ It 
would soon be painfully apparent that their descrip- 
tion was correct, but in a sense they did not mean. 
Alas ! the darkness is abysmal, but it is not the 
darkness of the ages, but the profound ignorance of 
our friends and neighbors who, parrot-like, repeat 
the current talk of the day, and praise or condemn 
as fashion and the popular voice bid them speak. 

This wonderful era, the Middle Ages, was, as is 
necessarily implied in the description which we have 
given, a formative period ; it witnessed a transition 
from wild confusion to order, regulated and settled 
by law in the State and in society. Among the in- 
strumentalities which good men and true, during 
the first half of this interval, or possibly two-thirds, 
looked to and trusted as most effectual to repress 
violence and subserve the best interests of mankind, 
was the Papal Power, We have ventured to sug- 
gest that had we lived between the era, say of the 
fall of the Western Empire in A.D. 476, and the close 
of the thirteenth century, we would have acted 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 20C) 

zealously with those who sought to aggrandize the 
power and the influence of the Bishop of Rome. We 
admit that it was for those who lived at the time, 
and would have been for us, had we been their con- 
temporaries, a huge mistake to adopt this course, 
but that was not the question ; the issue for us to 
have met was, " What is best for mankind, as far as 
ordinary human wisdom can foresee ? " and the an- 
swer would have been, a great central power, based 
upon religion and morals, commanding the rever- 
ence of society, brave enough to speak out for right 
and justice and truth, and strong enough to cause 
its voice to be obeyed. Such a power offered it- 
self and pressed itself upon the acceptance of the 
world for the cure of its evils and the supply of its 
social and moral needs in the rapidly-growing influ- 
ence of what was claimed to be S. Peter's Chair. 
We are not ignoring the immoralities which often 
disgraced the lives of the Popes, and the corruptions 
which were creeping into the system. We do not 
forget the pornography and the dicta of Gregory VII. 
and the schema of Innocent III., but at a distance, 
when there were few channels of communication, 
scandals, even in the lives of eminent persons, were 
not soon known, and even when discovered, were 
not soon or readily published far and wide, and per- 
versions in doctrine and declensions in discipline 
and practice did not challenge immediate attention 
and rebuke in an uncritical age. 

The Papal Power at a distance from Rome in- 
14 



2IO THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

Spired awe and continued to command the highest 
reverence, in spite of the Johns, and Formosus, and 
Stephens, and Theodoras, and Marozias. It was 
perfectly natural that this should be so, because the 
drift of Papal influence, as exhibited in public in the 
great issues, aside from the aggrandizement of its 
own power, was generally on the side of equity, and 
justice, and righteousness. An illustration will best 
serve to make plain our meaning. Philip Augustus 
of France, a contemporary of King John of England, 
in defiance of God's law and the opinion of men, re- 
solved to put away the wife of his youth, and enter 
into a guilty alliance with a disreputable woman. 
Who was there to say him nay ? There was no pub- 
lic opinion, in the modern sense of the term ; no 
public Press ; no local tribunal to call him to ac- 
count. Even the Church was powerless in her na- 
tional councils to coerce him into a decent respect 
for good manners and morals; on the contrary, 
Philip compelled her in her local councils to sanction 
by her approval his vileness and wickedness. 

Let him of the nineteenth century who hears or 
reads this statement be not overmuch shocked, as 
though we in our time never winked at vice in high 
places, nor connived at sin under the penalty of los- 
ing the favor of the great, or at the price of receiv- 
ing the money or the patronage of the rich. Alas ! 
considering all the circumstances of those who live 
and act, one age has not so much the advantage of 
another. Be that as it may, however, there seemed 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 211 

to be at the time of which we are speaking no power 
on earth to stay the French King in his career of 
foul wrong to his injured wife and Queen, until the 
case came by appeal of Ingelburga to Innocent III. 
He quickly decided the issue in favor of innocence 
and right, and bade the monarch to put away his 
mistress and reinstate his wife. Philip demurred, 
and sought by every means at his command to cajole 
the Pope into acquiescence in his crime, but the 
Bishop of Rome sternly refused to listen to his flat- 
teries or receive his bribes. He brought to bear up- 
on him excommunication and interdict, and in six 
months' time Agnes was an outcast, and Ingelburga 
was in her lawful place. Think of the moral effect 
of such a spectacle presented and kept before the 
eyes of Europe. 

Is it any wonder that good men would hail the 
Papacy in such an age, v/hen there seemed to be no 
other power on earth strong enough to redress the 
terrible wrongs which were wrought by kings, and 
princes, and barons, and to cure the evils which were 
preying upon society ? It is perfectly true that 
these good men were unwittingly helping to intro- 
duce and develop what would ultimately prove a 
worse evil than those which they sought to repress 
and expel ; but they could not see into the distant 
future any more than we can. We have known a 
tender-hearted physician ply his patient, who w^as 
writhing with agony under the scourge of a painful 
disease, with nightly doses of morphine. The nar- 



212 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

cotic gave immediate and grateful relief, and at 
length the sick man became well ; but he arose from 
his couch with a worse and more terrible disorder 
than that of which he had been cured ; the insidious 
drug had introduced a craving for stimulants, and 
the present relief from excruciating distress was re- 
placed by a permanent mania for drink. Thus was 
it with those who welcomed the autocracy and su- 
premacy of the See of Rome, in the eleventh and 
following centuries, as a panacea for the ills of so- 
ciety and of the state and of the Church ; they little 
dreamed that they were aiding to bind Europe in 
chains, which would become so galling in two cen- 
turies or more that the nations, goaded to frenzy by 
exactions and repression and tyranny, would rise in 
wild revolt and burst them asunder. Yet so it was, 
and the great convulsion of the sixteenth century 
was the outcome of centralization pushed to the 
extreme, without limits or restraints from beneath, 
and with scarcely any acknowledgment of accounta- 
bility to any power which reigned above. Looking 
over that remote past, and taking into account the 
conditions of society, the presence of evils which 
have, long since disappeared, and the absence of re- 
straints which are the creation of modern times, and 
sinking ourselves to the level of ordinary mortals, 
and allowing that we are not endowed with the gift 
of forecasting the future beyond the powers of pre- 
science possessed by our ancestors, we shall be pre- 
pared to admit that good men and wise men were 



J^ ELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 213 

excusable, if not justified, in throwing their influ- 
ence on the side of the Pope. At all events they 
did so, and continued to do so until the reforming 
councils of the fifteenth century were, after repeated 
efforts, shown to be powerless " to reform the Church 
in its head and members," the object for which they 
were convened ; and it was seen that the Western 
Patriarchate was beyond control from within, and 
was now undoing, and more than undoing, all the 
good that it had once and for ages done, by its cor- 
ruption in faith and morals, its usurpations and 
rapacity, and its intolerable claims. Then true men 
and good men largely began to draw off from giving 
it their support with a view to aggrandize its power, 
and sought to put canonical restraints upon it, or 
else they took up a position of open revolt. 

Thus the elements which might have saved it 
from the terrible catastrophe which has overtaken it 
in the Vatican decrees of 1870 were so reduced in 
strength, after the upheaval and disruption of the 
sixteenth century, that they were unequal to the ef- 
fort of making head against the centripetal forces 
which had been for centuries driving Rome on to 
the awful plunge which she made when she dis- 
owned, by formal decree and as a matter of faith, 
the corporate government, as constituted and estab- 
lished by Christ, and substituted in its place another 
of her own invention — an absolute monarchy vested 
in a single potentate, not only free from limitation 
and irresponsible to man, but alleged to be and ac- 



214 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

knovvledged to be infallible. This is the phenome- 
non which now confronts us, and we claim that we 
have abundantly accounted for its existence by the 
causes which we have adduced. God's word and 
God's will can have nothing whatever to do with a 
system which would make Him, if it were of Divine 
origin, flatly contradict Himself. It has been built 
up by human instrumentalities, and the result is an 
awful impiety, as we firmly believe, because it has at- 
tempted to invade Christ's sovereignty, and amend 
and repeal His laws. Place the Papacy as organized 
by the Schema of Pius IX., as it exists now, leav- 
ing out of view all the accidents of time and place, 
all the accessories which are not essential, face to 
face with the form of government established by our 
risen Lord, and vested by Him, as His last act while 
He remained on earth, in His eleven Apostles ; face 
to face with the form of government administered 
by those same Apostles, as recorded by the Blessed 
Spirit in the inspired word of God ; and it will at 
once be apparent that they are irreconcilable. The 
one is not derived from the other, as a flower from 
the bud or fruit from the blossom. The latter could 
only take the place of the former by revolution. 
There must have been the acts of breaking down 
and destroying, and then of substitution. And this 
exactly describes the process. 

In this way modern Romanism occupies the seat 
of the ancient Catholic Patriarchate of the West. 
Practically, this has been the case for a long time, 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 21$ 

but as a matter of law and of faith it has only been 
so since 1870. Up to that date Gallicanism — 
which regarded the Pope simply as the administra- 
tive head of CJiristendoni — was possible. Since that 
date and henceforth, until the Vatican decrees are 
repealed, such a view in the Roman Communion is 
heresy, and subjects him who maintains it to the 
pains and penalties of excommunication. We see, 
then, how very modern modern Romanism is. 
What place can such a system have in any move- 
ment toward Christian unity? '■'• Just none at air"" 
is the terse and definite answer which Rome her- 
self compels us to make. In her present attitude, 
as defined by herself, she has isolated herself from 
the rest of Christendom. She has put up the bars 
against all approach from without, and has pro- 
claimed and published the declaration that only on 
her own terms will she hold communion wath her 
sister Patriarchates, or with any who profess and 
call themselves Christians, and those terms all out- 
side of the obedience of the Pope believe to be dis- 
loyalty to Christ and treason against His Church. 
Surely it is useless, and worse than hopeless, to con- 
sider Rome in any efforts toward healing the pres- 
ent unhappy divisions of Christendom. She is the 
most unhistoric of sects. Her origin, as exhibiting a 
system which she enjoins as of faith, goes back no 
further than 1870. A Christianity which is not his- 
toric, which cannot trace its organic life in polity, 
faith, sacraments, and litui"gy back to the xA.postles, 



2l6 THE CHURCH OF ROME IN HER 

and through them find shelter under Christ's char- 
ter and constitution, cannot make good its claim 
to be Christ's Church, as He established it on the 
INIount of Ascension, and His Apostles, acting un- 
der His explicit directions, and guided and sus- 
tained by the Holy Ghost, organized it on the day 
of Pentecost, and administered it in all parts of the 
world whithersoever they went as the pioneer mis- 
sionaries of the Gospel. What God has in store 
for Rome we know not ; but as she stands before us 
to-day we can see no prospect of reaching her on 
any terms, save her own, which would be, as we ac- 
count it, an absolute and complete surrender of 
Catholicity, and treason against Christ, and disloy- 
alty to His Church. We are hopeless, so far as 
human foresight can reach, of Rome's reforming her- 
self, and receding from her present position of isola- 
tion from the rest of Christendom, and returning to 
her place as a Patriarchate among Patriarchates. 

The only ground for hope which we can discover 
for the Papacy is bound up in the success of the ef- 
forts for the accomplishment of Christian unity. If 
that blessed result is ever gained, then perchance 
the entirety of Christianity without Rome can con- 
strain her to see her unchristian attitude and state, 
and to desire and seek to resume her place once 
more as a branch of Christ's Church. We admit 
that the prospect is very far from being encourag- 
ing ; still, we may ask, is it any more gloomy than 
that of the conversion of the Jews ? Our first duty 



RELATION TO CHRISTIAN UNITY. 21/ 

is to labor for the unity of Christendom outside of 
Rome ; and in this field of noble endeavor it seems 
to me that we of the American Church have a very 
special vocation from God, made plain before our 
eyes by the providential position which we hold in 
relation to our fellow Christians. On the positive 
side we possess the deposit of Holy Orders, Faith, 
Sacraments, and a pure Liturgy ; on the negative 
we are, while being a historic Church reaching back 
without break or interruption to the i\postles, free 
from all the complications which embarrass older 
members of the Christian Commonwealth, who have 
had their feuds and quarrels, and retain their irrita- 
tions and jealousies, which are the inheritance of 
the past. We are the young daughter of ancient 
parentage, planted on virgin soil, with no bitter re- 
collections of our own to cherish ; and certainly, as 
yet, with years too few behind us to have enabled 
us to have left with others unpleasant memories of 
ourselves. Again, we are unembarrassed with any 
relations to the State. We are in the same condi- 
tion in which the Early Church was before the days 
of Constantine. Locally, we are the connecting link 
between the old world on the East and the West. 
We reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We 
brought the historic Episcopate from Scotland in 
1784, and from England in 1787 and 1790, and 
planted it in Connecticut, and New York, and Penn- 
sylvania, and Virginia, and within a century we 
have carried it to California, and Oregon, and Wash- 



2l8 THE CHURCH OF ROME. 

ington Territory. We have Europe behind us, and 
Asia before us, and we are between, and the Patri- 
archates of the East are coming to our shores and 
making their homes among us. Surely Providence 
seems to be calling us by many unmistakable signs 
to become the great instrument in God's hands of 
effecting the unity of Christendom. Let us seek to 
enlighten ignorance and disarm prejudice ; let us 
be true to the sacred office which God has assigned 
us, to hold in trust for mankind the treasures of 
Ploly Orders, the Catholic Faith, the Sacraments, 
and the Liturgy ; let us, as our supreme duty and 
highest pleasure, steadfastly speak to all " the truth 
in love " ; and then we may be granted in time, it 
may be far on in the future, still we may be granted 
the glorious honor and the celestial happiness of 
giving the highest and best meaning to our national 
motto " E pluribus iniitm!'' when the American 
Church shall become the peacemaker among the 
dissentient members of the family, and the accepted 
medium through which they will again unite in com- 
munion, and so the divisions of Christendom will be 
healed, and out of the many branches there will ap- 
pear to be once more, as of yore, but one Church 
under Christ, the Supreme Head, on His throne in 
heaven — one out of many in Him, as He is one 
with the Father, they in Him and He in them. 



A lecture, supplementary to this course, entitled, 
"The Patriarchate of Constantinople and 
THE Church of the East," was delivered at Christ 
Church on the seventeenth of May, 1888, by the 
Reverend Jacob S. Shipman, D.D., D.C.L. 

This lecture will not be found in this volume for 
the reason that the manuscript was not received in 
time for publication. 

It is hoped that this lecture, however, may be put 
before the public at some later date. 



